


Indentions in the Sheets

by Thelonelycoast



Series: All the Little Lights series [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Bonding, Brothers, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Family, Fiction, Gen, Growing Up Together, Happy Ending, Incest, Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Female Character, Paris - Freeform, Siblings, Slash, Third Person POV, Travel, larry stylinson - Freeform, m/m - Freeform, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:36:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thelonelycoast/pseuds/Thelonelycoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Gracie didn’t know how to tell her parents that the other kids at school teased her mercilessly...Even her teachers whispered about it when they thought she couldn’t hear and some of the cruel ones, well, they didn’t even bother to whisper. Gracie stuck up for them at first - stuck up for the boys who had given her baths and kissed her scrapes and built her blanket forts in the living room, the boys who had lifted her up in an airplane above their heads, who had told her more interesting stories about the world than all the storybooks crowding her bookshelves ever could. But then, they stopped coming round and the images started to fade and warp, to curl in at the edges. She started to believe the lies they told about them and she hated them as much as anyone, maybe even more.</i>
</p><p>  <i>And now, she was going to live with them.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Circles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/616664) so it might be a good idea to read that first. It's not totally necessary to understand what's going on, but it might help! I've been working on this for ages and it's becoming a monster of a fic, so I decided to split it into parts for the sake of being able to share something with you guys now. This is a lot more angsty than Circles, but will eventually have a happy ending :)
> 
> Circles was written from Anne Styles-Tomlinson's POV; this is written from Gracie Tomlinson's (Louis and Harry's little sister) POV. This story takes place in Paris fifteen years after "Circles".

**Indentions in the Sheets**

_But now we must pack up every piece of the life we used to love just to keep ourselves at least enough to carry on. And here's where your mother sleeps and here is the room where your brothers were born - indentions in the sheets, where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore_ \- Holland, 1945, Neutral Milk Hotel

In sixth form, Gracie learned about World War II. She learned that the intense light and heat from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki left silhouettes behind - human shadows painted on walls and doorways and floorboards - whole lives reduced to greasy smears of smoke and ash, to ghostly imprints, in an instant. She used to find the photos quite beautiful. She hung them on her walls so the shadows danced around her as the moon passed over her room at night, swinging wildly like a child’s mobile, holding hands as they moved into the great beyond. Sometimes, she wanted to go with them. Sometimes, she wanted to be anywhere but here.

Her parents found it morbid, of course. But then, they found most of the things she did to be morbid - how she always wore black, how she kept a pet snake in the terrarium beside her bed, how she liked to sit and read in the chapel cemetery down the lane after college let out. She wasn’t a goth or an emo or anything; she didn’t stand around under the bleachers smoking fags and listening to shite music or giving boys with eye-liner and greasy fringe hurried hand-jobs. She’d never even kissed a boy - not properly. No, Gracie was just an angry teenager. Gracie was just a plant that had grown crooked in the shadows her brothers had left behind.

She didn’t know how to tell her parents that her life felt like living in the wake of a horrible disaster, like she was walking among phantoms. She didn’t know how to tell them how it felt to be alone in a place where so much love had once lived - that everywhere she went, her brothers had gone before. Their initials were scratched into the tree in the backyard and written in marker under her bed frame. Their eyelashes and skin-cells and fingerprints had left marks on everything she touched before she touched it.  The collective weight of their breath, the echoes of their voices hung in the air around Gracie like clouds, like weather, like the threat of rain.

Gracie didn’t know how to tell them that the other kids at school teased her mercilessly. That everyone knew that her brothers had been fags and worse, fags with _each other_. Even her teachers whispered about it when they thought she couldn’t hear and some of the cruel ones, well, they didn’t even _bother_ to whisper. Gracie stuck up for them at first - stuck up for the boys who had given her baths and kissed her scrapes and built her blanket forts in the living room, the boys who had lifted her up in an airplane above their heads, who had told her more interesting stories about the world than all the storybooks crowding her bookshelves ever could. But then, they stopped coming round and the images started to fade and warp, to curl in at the edges. She started to believe the lies they told about them and she hated them as much as anyone, maybe even _more_.

And now, she was going to live with them.

* * *

“Can you watch Jack a minute?” Harry asked, not waiting for an answer before dumping his son into Gracie’s lap. Harry had his cell-phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear as he walked out into the hall to get more privacy. Gracie didn’t get much privacy anymore - not with everyone packed into the house for the wake, not with the neighbors stopping by with casseroles at all hours, not with the estate executor sorting through her parents’ things, not with the movers packing her old life into boxes and certainly not with Harry and Louis here. She just wanted everything and everyone to go away. She just wanted a bit of quiet.

“I know it’s silly, but I just - I wanted to say goodnight to her, if that’s okay?” she heard Harry whisper, before he was out of range.

Jack regarded Gracie with steady blue eyes before reaching out to grab a hank of her long hair, pulling it towards his mouth with one chubby fist. “Ew, Jack, gross,” she scolded him, as he sucked happily on the ends of her hair.

Jack looked like Louis had as a baby - or like the pictures Gracie had seen of Louis as a baby anyway - round-cheeked and squinty eyed, his short chubby legs creased into folds. She wasn’t exactly sure how Jack came about - he seemed to materialize like a rabbit pulled from a magician’s hat - one day he wasn’t there and the next, her parents had a photograph of him magneted to the fridge along with the week’s shopping list and her school art projects. Gracie didn’t understand how boys had sex, much less made a baby, but that didn’t stop her from loving Jack. Like her, he was a bystander in all this - he couldn’t help being what he was any more than she could.

Harry came back, laughing when he saw Jack gumming her hair, but at least had the decency to look apologetic as he relieved her, balancing the boy expertly on one hip. “Sorry, he’s going through a bit of an oral phase at the moment. You want to help me fix his bottle?”

Gracie rolled her eyes, scooting backwards on the bed to pop the screened lid from Hester’s terrarium. Hester curled around Gracie’s arm and she ran a finger along the snake’s smooth musculature. She wished she could take Hester with her, but Louis had said something dodgy about foreign customs, which she suspected was just a ruse for him not to have reptiles in his house. He was proper terrified of snakes. She remembered when she was younger, he’d always left the room when the snake scene came on in Indiana Jones - under the pretense of making a sandwich or needing a wee and Harry always teased him about it later. 

So yes, Gracie wished she could take Hester with her. In fact, Gracie wished a lot of things. She wished that people didn’t drink and drive. She wished that her parents were still alive. She wished she’d gotten a chance to be better, to be the daughter her parents had longed for. She wished she’d told them she loved them every day. But most of all, she wished she weren’t going to Paris.  With _them_.

* * *

Louis and Harry lived in a fifth floor walk-up, with three small bedrooms, a large communal living space with mismatched furniture, a cramped, lived-in kitchen and a balcony with a view of the Sienne. Gracie tried to tell herself she was on vacation, tried to stress the temporariness of it all, tried to pretend her parents were back in England, waiting for her to come home. It was easier that way.

“This one’s yours,” Louis said, flicking on the light in what was to be her room. It smelled faintly of dark room chemicals and dust, the bare windows stripped of their heavy drapes, staring out at her like sightless eye sockets. Unlike the rest of the house, it didn’t have any touches of warmth, any sense of the people who’d lived in it. Like her, it was an empty shell. The only pieces of furniture were a narrow wooden bed and a dresser and an empty bookcase. Gracie tried to imagine books on the shelves, clothes folded away neatly in the dresser drawers, postcards and photos tacked to the wall above the bed, but inevitably it made her think of home and how _this_ wasn’t it.

“Sorry it isn’t bigger. We had to convert Harry’s studio for the time being.” Gracie didn’t say anything. She hadn’t said anything since the accident. She sat down on the bed, fingering the tattered quilt. This was her life now.

Louis set her suitcase down in one corner (they’d posted the rest), but she didn’t have any desire to unpack it. She didn’t want to do anything to make this home. “We can paint it of course,” Louis said, still lingering. “Buy some nice curtains, maybe a dressing table. Whatever you want-”

Gracie pulled her headphones from her backpack and sunk them over her ears, Tiger’s Jaw drowning out the sound of Louis’ voice. What she _wanted_ was to be left alone.

Louis did a brief, embarrassed shuffle in the doorway before closing the door. Gracie let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. This was going to be harder than she thought.

* * *

Harry came in some time later, setting a cup of tea down on top of her dresser which she made no move to touch. Maybe she would starve to death. Maybe she would just fade away until there was nothing left. She wondered where peoples’ dreams went when they died.  She wondered where those things that made people uniquely themselves - the sound of their laugh, the scent of their skin - went when they died. She knew her parents were in boxes in the ground because she’d seen it herself, but what about the things you couldn’t fit in boxes? Where did _those_ things go? And if they were still lingered on after - like phantoms - how would whatever remained of her parents know where to find her?

“Louis and I are going to go get some groceries. Did you want to come? Might be nice to get a bit of fresh air.”

Gracie kept her eyes trained on the ceiling, her hands folded over her stomach. She wished she could disappear. She still had her headphones on, but the album had stopped playing hours ago and she was just listening to silence and the sound of her own heart.

“If you like music, I’ve got a pretty big vinyl collection. You can borrow whatever you like.” Harry’s voice was so sincere, so desperate for approval that Gracie nearly broke. It was lonely in her bubble of silence, but it was safe. Safe was what she needed.

She felt like she was pressing all her fingers into holes in a dam and if she let go for even a second, if she opened her mouth to speak, the tidal wave of her emotions would come rolling out and she would drown them all. She didn’t speak because she was afraid if she started, she would never stop; if she opened the floodgates now, she would never stop crying or remembering. Her words, her tears, would make her parents’ death real in a way that the funeral hadn’t, that moving to Paris hadn’t, that this naked little room so far removed from her own bedroom hadn’t.

Maybe, she would never talk again.

“I can help you decorate later if you want?” Gracie sighed, rolling over to face the wall, to signal that their conversation was over.

Harry hovered a hand over her ankle, before tentatively clasping it. It was the first time since her parents’ accident that she had been touched without flinching. This, more than anything, made her want to cry. Because it meant she was getting used to it, that she was coming closer to accepting the emptiness in her chest as a condition of her new life.

Harry’s thumb stroked a soothing pattern over her ankle bone.  It took all Gracie’s self-control not to throw herself on him because in that moment, she wanted nothing more than for him to hold her, like he had when she was still a baby, when he was still around. “Listen, I know it’s not ideal. But I hope you can be happy here one day.”

Gracie waited until he left and the door was firmly closed to let out the sob that was trapped in her throat. It was unlike any sound she had ever made, strangled and inhuman, the wail of an animal with its leg caught in a trap - echoing loudly in the empty room. No matter what, she wouldn’t let them see her cry. She wouldn’t admit there was anything worth crying over.

* * *

While Louis and Harry were out, Gracie explored the rest of the flat. She was numb, but she wasn’t immune to boredom and she needed something to occupy her thoughts - something other than _emptyemptyempty_.

Their flat was much smaller than her house in Cheshire, but it had its share of cozy touches. In the living room, there were several floor-to-ceiling bookcases packed with books on travel and foreign cuisine and art and all manner of literature. Gracie spent a few minutes running her fingers across their leather-bound spines, but imagined she could easily spend hours poring through their pages on some rainy afternoon when there was nothing else to do.

In addition to the books, the shelves were crowded with souvenirs collected from Harry and Louis’ trips around the world - African masks and kitchy-snow globes and little handmade boxes for holding trinkets and of course, framed photographs. There were pictures everywhere - Harry had documented every moment of his life from the age of sixteen on, when he’d gotten his first camera.

Harry had all sorts of cameras now - film cameras and toy cameras, vintage cameras, rectangular shaped cameras with multiple lenses staring out like spiders’ eyes. He’d even bought Jack one of those sturdy, brightly-colored digital cameras for kids that could be sucked on and thrown on the floor without breaking and sometimes even produced an interesting shot of someone’s feet.

Several of Jack’s toys were abandoned on the carpet, along with ground-in cereal bits. Cozy throws were bunched up in the corners of the couch and there was a cluster of mugs on the coffee table with tea-rings staining their insides. Whatever else Gracie might think of it - her brothers had built a life for themselves here - a calm Island in the midst of a turbulent sea.

At the end of the hall, there was a sunny yellow room with gauzy, billowing curtains that let in the sounds of traffic from the street. It held a white crib in one corner and a rocking chair and a bookcase in the other alongside a wooden chest of toys. Gracie sat cross-legged on the carpet and opened the lid of the toy chest, rummaging through stuffed animals and building blocks and neatly folded piles of onesies that Jack had outgrown.

Gracie paused when she found a plush penguin with most of its stuffing gone, staring out at her forlornly from one scuffed plastic eye. She recalled with sudden, excruciating clarity an autumn day in the park near their home in Cheshire - Louis holding out the stuffed penguin in front of her as Harry pushed her on the swing from behind - her small arms reaching and reaching, but never quite closing around it.

Where had _that_ come from? Gracie hadn’t thought of that day in years and then suddenly, there it was - like a song she’d forgotten and heard on the radio years later and still somehow knew all the words to. Gracie shoved the penguin to the bottom of the chest, slamming the lid on it. She didn’t like remembering them as they’d been - it made her confused and made it all the harder to hate them - first for being what they were, and second, for leaving her to deal with everything alone.

Harry and Louis’ room was on the other side of hers and she had purposefully saved it for last because it intrigued her the most. They shared a bed, which just affirmed everything people at home had said about her brothers. That they were sick. That they did things to each other - things that brothers _shouldn’t_. It was funny - now that their parents were gone, Harry and Louis weren’t even properly brothers anymore, just two people that had grown up together in the same house and happened to share the same last name.  Gracie was the only tie to their old life in England, the only evidence that things had been different once.

There were a series of black and white photographs hanging on the wall, mostly of Louis and Jack, but some of their parents and some of her. Gracie stopped at the one nearest the door. She couldn’t have been more than three or four in the picture - she was wearing a little blue smock dress Louis had bought her and toddling through a grassy field in the setting sun. She remembered the day, but she didn’t remember Harry taking the picture. She didn’t remember ever being that happy.

Gracie went through their dresser, rummaging through their clothes. They shared mostly everything except shoes and pants, so most of the time one of them was stuck in something ill-fitting - Louis constantly pushing up the sleeves of his jumper so they wouldn’t fall down over his hands, Harry wearing Louis’ denim shirts open because they didn’t quite button across his broader chest.

When Gracie found a purple dildo and some lube wedged back between a folded row of pants, she quickly slammed the drawer and fled the room. She stood out on the balcony for a moment, taking deep, centering breaths and trying to rid herself of the mental picture those things had presented. She had no idea what went where or who did what to whom, but she was better off knowing as little as possible.  It was sick, what they did, and she wanted no part of it.

Maybe she could just run away. But _no_ \- she hardly knew where she was, let alone where to go. And it wasn’t as if she had a ton of friends waiting for her back home. And she wouldn’t get very far without knowing a lick of French or having any money in her pocket. Okay, so maybe she could stay just long enough to get into a good Uni and then move back to England. It wasn’t _forever_ , her being here. And it certainly wasn’t _home_. Gracie just had to stick it a few more years. She’d spent her whole life waiting for her life to begin - Gracie could manage a few years more.

Harry and Louis staggered in, weighted down by sacks of groceries and laughing over something Louis had said a moment before. Harry set about cooking and Louis came out onto the balcony, wearing Jack in a carrier and loosely cradling a glass of white wine in one hand. Jack pumped his legs at the air, babbling happily at Gracie. She held her hand out and he latched onto her index finger, covering it with his fist. His grip was surprisingly tight for a baby and she found herself not wanting him to let go.

“We’re having friends over for dinner,” Louis said, watching her carefully for a reaction. “Don’t mean to overwhelm you, but Harry’s going out of town tomorrow for a few days so we wanted to catch up before he left.”

Gracie shrugged, keeping her eyes on the street. She thought about jumping and then immediately _un_ -thought it. She’d probably just break her stupid neck. Besides, she didn’t want to _die_ ; she just didn’t want to be here. Or anywhere, really. A breeze ruffled her hair, hiding her face from Louis. Louis sighed, taking a sip of his wine. She really wished he wouldn’t drink. Didn’t he even _care_ that their parents were killed by a drunk driver?

“I wish you’d talk to us, Gracie. You’re not the only one who lost them, you know.”

Gracie tore her hand away from Jack’s abruptly and he let out a startled cry as she shouldered her way past Louis into the flat. “What now?” Harry asked Louis as Gracie stomped past the kitchen toward her room.

“Hell if I know, chick,” Louis mumbled, bouncing Jack up and down to quiet him.

* * *

Gracie had thought the apartment was cramped before, but with scent of heavy French cooking in the air and music on the stereo and five other bodies crammed into the living room, it was downright claustrophobic. Louis had insisted Gracie join them, but she was determined not to enjoy herself and avoided all attempts by the others’ to draw her into conversation.

Maybe Gracie could be an anthropologist when she grew up. She could make her life’s work quietly studying other peoples’ lives. That way, she would never have to feel sad or angry or get her heart broken; she wouldn’t have to feel anything at all. A quiet observer - watching the world through a glass bubble, immune to the world’s hurts. It sounded nice.

Gracie tried watching all the dinner guests with an objective eye, tried to not form any feelings about them one way or another, but it was harder than she’d thought. There was Zayn, the soft-spoken artist with the face of an Italian model and tattoos covering every inch of his exposed arms. There was his boyfriend, Liam, an art dealer who had met Zayn at a party at the Pompidou, and being too shy to ask him out on a proper date, had offered to shop some of his paintings around to galleries.

There was Lou, who dressed about ten years younger than she actually was and did hair and makeup for celebrities. There was Lou’s husband, Tom, who played guitar in a band Gracie had heard of and actually quite liked. Then there was their daughter, Lux, who was a year older than Gracie and had bleached blonde hair with pink streaks in it and wore a faded sundress with combat boots and pair of heart-shaped sunglasses.

Lux was everything Gracie wasn’t, everything she never knew she wanted to be - foul-mouthed and beautiful and brash and well-traveled and smart as a whip. She seemed so sure of herself - it was as if no one had ever told her she wasn’t pretty enough or smart enough or simply, well... _enough_. It was clear that, like Harry, Lux was the sort of person that everyone liked instantly and it made Gracie more than a little sad because she knew she could never be like that - loved and accepted simply because she was alive and vibrant and _there_. Gracie was just a little ghost milling about the edges of the party, trying to avoid being noticed and yet at the same time, longing desperately for someone, _anyone_ , to see her.

As it turned out, Harry was a tremendous cook. Gracie hadn’t planned on eating, had wanted to continue her hunger strike as long as possible, but the scent of Harry’s cooking was too intoxicating and she was too hungry. The very air of the flat seemed to have a weight to it - heavy with food and wine and conversation and music. There was Onion Soup and Vegetable Cassoulet, Foie Gras and Escargot Bourguignon (which was snails!) and enough wine to inebriate a small army. Even Lux drank wine with dinner, though Gracie politely declined with a shake of her head and stuck with the fizzy lemonade Harry had poured her. She kept track of how much her brothers drank - Harry a few sips as he was cooking and Louis four whole glasses. Louis worried her.

Gracie was a vegetarian so she just stuck to the Cassoulet, but when Harry realized, he whipped her up a bowl of Onion soup without the beef stock - with sweet, caramelized onions and crunchy, thick-cut French bread and a layer of browned, bubbled cheese that she picked off the edges of the ceramic crock with her nail, not wanting to miss a bite.

Dessert was Crème Brûlée with a fine crackled glaze and fresh, plump apricots drizzled with honey and sesame seeds and served with fat, soft slices of brie. Gracie couldn’t help the small whimper that escaped her as she sunk a spoonful of creamy, burnt-sweet custard into her mouth and everyone had a good laugh as her face burned red. She wasn’t used to eating this decadently - her parents had been meat and potatoes people and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a meal so good - if _ever_.

Harry whipped up cappuccinos on the Espresso machine, the lush aerated foam tickling at Gracie’s nose and she felt very grown-up and sophisticated in her new French life. Not that she was getting used to it.

As dessert wound down, everyone disseminated - Louis and Tom to do the washing up, Zayn and Lou onto the balcony to have a smoke and Liam kept Jack entertained and a steady stream of vinyl records playing in the living room.

“You want to go up to the roof and have a fag?” Lux asked. Gracie looked around for Harry, but he had disappeared and Louis was entrenched in a spirited, drunken argument with Tom over electronic music in the kitchen. “It’s okay. They won’t mind.”

Gracie shrugged and followed Lux up the fire-escape to the roof, their combat boots ringing out on the iron rungs. The sun was setting over Paris, the lamplights sparkling in the dark waters of the Sienne and the Eiffel tower standing like a shining sentinel above it all. There were lights on in the open windows across the way, where people carried on lives - drinking or dancing or sleeping or reading, as if they would never die. As if _no one_ ever died. Gracie thought she would never hear a sad song again without thinking of her mum and dad. She thought she would never see another sunset without thinking it was another one they’d missed. She didn’t know where people found the strength to want to keep on going.

Lux had snuck two beers from the fridge, but Gracie shook her head when she was offered one. “Suit yourself,” Lux said, popping hers open with an experienced twist of the wrist. Lux handed Gracie a cigarette without asking and she took it, even though she didn’t smoke. “You don’t say much, do you?”

Gracie shrugged again. It was getting more and more difficult to not talk, especially when she hadn’t made one friend here yet. Lux paused in her smoking to reach over and ruffle Gracie’s hair. “Your hair would look cool with some blue streaks in it. My mum could do it if you like?”

Gracie nodded slowly. No one had ever offered to do anything like that for her before. She wondered if Lux pitied her. “You got a boyfriend?” Lux asked, flicking ash into the gutter. Gracie shook her head. An ant crawled over Gracie’s leg and she flicked it off. Lux picked at her beer label with a purple-painted fingernail.

“Girlfriend?” Gracie shook her head, more vehemently this time.

“Listen, it’s not a big deal. Haven’t you ever kissed anyone before?” Gracie blushed and lowered her head, the answer implicit in her gesture. Lux stubbed out her cigarette so Gracie did the same, even though she’d hardly smoked it. Lux shifted closer, so they were sitting hip to hip, legs slightly tacky with sweat where they pressed together. For a while, they just sat like that, watching the evening sky turn colors like a watercolor running in the rain.

“You want to have a go?” Lux asked and before Gracie could figure out what she meant, Lux’s lips were pressed against her own and she was breathing her in.

Lux tasted of yeasty beer and cigarettes and cotton candy lip-gloss. She threaded her fingers through Gracie’s long hair, drawing her closer as she slipped her tongue into Gracie’s mouth in a way that made Gracie slightly breathless. It was nice - _this_. She felt slightly drunk off the food and the night, light-headed from the cigarette and not-quite there but Lux was warm and solid beside her, smelling of soap and fruity perfume. When they parted, Gracie just stared at her, mouth slightly agape.

“Wow,” she blurted out and Lux laughed, raising her beer in mock salute.

“She speaks!”

* * *

Gracie shared Lux’s bed that night and Lux’s parents took the fold-out couch in the living room. Zayn and Liam passed out on the floor of Jack’s bedroom in a heap of spare blankets from the linen closet, ringed in by a small pile of stuffed animals Jack had thoughtfully placed around them. It was strange, sleeping in a house with so many others, but also oddly comforting. When she thought of all their collective breaths and heartbeats filling the small flat, she felt oddly at peace.

Still, it took some time to fall asleep - to drown out the sound of creaking floorboards when Zayn snuck out on the balcony to have a cigarette and the occasional flush of the toilet and Tom’s wheezy snoring and Jack’s faint cries from the nursery.

When she finally did get to sleep, it was the weight of her dreams that dragged her down.  Gracie woke in the middle of the night, momentarily forgetting where she was. Unfamiliar shapes loomed out at her in the darkness and she sat up in bed, clutching her chest, feeling a panic attack coming on until she felt the reassuring warmth of Lux’s body at her side, like an anchor holding her in place, in the moment.

Lux grabbed her hand and held it. She had chipped nail-polish on her fingers, which were bitten down to the quick. Everything about Lux seemed perfect in a way that Gracie would never be perfect because she tried too hard, cared too much what other people thought.

“Hey. Hey. It’s okay,” Lux said, rubbing soothing circles into Gracie’s back. Her tank top clung to her skin with a film of sweat.

“You’re awake?”

“Yeah. Those two have been going at it for hours it seems,” Lux laughed, indicating Louis and Harry’s room with a roll of her head. Before Gracie could ask what she was talking about, she heard a low moan that was mostly definitely Harry and felt her face flush. Lux didn’t seem embarrassed though; if anything, she seemed vaguely amused.

“But don’t you think it’s like - weird...or gross?” Gracie whispered.

Lux laughed. “They’re practically married and they have a kid together. Plus, they’re both sort of sexy.”

“Ew.”

“Well, they are! For old guys, I mean...But don’t tell them I said so! I mean, they practically raised me-” Gracie pulled a pillow down over her head, to block out the noise of her older brothers having sex and Lux’s words – _practically raised me_ \- which ricocheted around her head like a ball in a pinball machine.  So this was where they’d been when she needed them – helping to raise someone else’s kid.

* * *

When Gracie woke a second time, it was to Harry sneaking into her room. He had his camera bag slung over one shoulder and she could see his suitcase standing out in the hall. The light was just breaking over their edge of the world, the last evening shadows gathered in the corners of the room like slumbering animals before the sun chased them away from their burrows. Lux’s leg was draped over Gracie’s and the room was stiflingly hot as Harry bent down to kiss her forehead.

He smoothed his thumb affectionately over her cheekbone. “Just wanted to say goodbye before I left. Take care of Louis and Jack for me, yeah?”

Gracie gave him a small smile and he grinned back, before tiptoeing out of her room again.

The next week was relatively quiet around the flat. Louis was a rubbish cook, so they mostly ate takeaway while Harry was gone, but Gracie didn’t mind much. Louis was moody and withdrawn in Harry’s absence - changing into the same pair of sweats the second he got home and not bothering to shave all week. Even Jack seemed uncharacteristically subdued, playing quiet, solitary games on the carpet away from them. They spent most evenings in front of the telly passing paper cartons back and forth between them and Louis didn’t press the issue of Gracie talking. The week was nice – okay – _uneventful_.

Tom and Lou and Lux came over on Sunday around lunchtime.  Tom barbequed on the balcony while Jack napped and Louis and Lou drank beers and swapped gossip in the kitchen. At some point, Gracie and Lux snuck away to her room to paint one another’s nails and blast the latest punk album Lux was into. When Gracie got up to the go to the bathroom, she stopped short, hearing the sound of raised voices in the kitchen.

“I don’t like him going away all the time. How do I know he’s...you know...being faithful?”

Lou huffed. “Louis, come on, it’s Harry. He’s never loved anyone but you his entire life.”

“But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, I dated around a bit in college, but Harry never did, never got a chance to see what he might be missing - What if - what if he gets tired of me? What if he leaves me?” Louis’ voice cracked and Gracie froze, ice crystallizing in the marrow of her spine. She’d never heard that vulnerable note in Louis’ voice before.

Gracie hardly noticed Lux’s consoling hand at her back or the chin resting on her shoulder. Louis had cried at their parents’ funeral; they _all_ had, but she’d always seen Louis as the strong one, as the glue holding them all together. But what if the glue wasn’t as strong as she thought? Her whole life seemed poised on the edge of a cliff, ready to go over. She wondered if she was fated to live her whole life moving from one disaster to the next, a refugee with no place and no one to call home.

“With all due respect and I say this as one of your best friends, Louis, but you’re a complete and utter twat. I’ve seen the way that boy looks at you. There _is_ no one else for him. And you’ve always been enough, _more_ than enough.”

Gracie hurried back into her room, shutting the door behind her and flopping down despondently on the bed. “Gracie-” Lux began.

“Please, don’t,” Gracie begged, voice breaking on the words. Lux sat down next to her and took her hand silently, holding it in her lap.

Gracie tried to push the argument from her mind, which was easy enough with the blanket of everyone’s laughter surrounding her and the sun shining down on her face and good food in her belly. They took their food and some blankets up to the roof and had an impromptu picnic, Jack banging on a miniature guitar Tom had gotten him on a trip to Japan, Louis and Lou chugging beers and throwing grapes at one another when they thought no one was looking and Lux braiding Gracie’s hair into a plait. After lunch, Gracie and Lux changed into their bikinis and sunned themselves while the others got progressively drunker.

No one said anything when Lux swiped a beer from the cooler or when she lit a cigarette and passed it to Gracie. Gracie met Louis’ eyes and he gave her an encouraging nod and an enigmatic half smile. Of her brothers, Louis was the obvious disciplinarian when it came to Jack, so she was a little surprised at his permissiveness. Maybe it was the day or the company, but Louis seemed more relaxed somehow and it made the whole conversation in the kitchen seem distant and unimportant.

After dinner, Tom played covers of popular radio songs on his guitar in a lilting, folksy voice that had Lux’s chest tight with longing for England, for _home_.

* * *

It was a relief when Harry returned. Gracie hadn’t realized how much lightness he brought to the flat - always joking and singing and most importantly - making Louis laugh.

Harry didn’t get but three steps into the foyer or manage to slide all the way out of the strap of his camera bag before Louis was leaping up into Harry’s arms, legs clamped tight around Harry’s waist.

“I hate when you go away,” Louis whined into Harry’s neck, in a way that made Gracie want to turn her face away because she knew she was watching something intimate, something only meant for each other, but at the same time it was sort of beautiful and she didn’t _want_ to look away.  Their love burned so brightly it was like staring directly into the sun. Gracie wanted to be burned up by their love, changed by it. She wanted to be a witness.

Harry spun Louis in a circle, holding him up as if he weighed nothing at all, light dancing in his green eyes. “But I love coming home to you.”

Seeing Gracie standing tentatively in the hall, Harry gave her a shy wave over Louis’ shoulder. “You too, Gracie.”

Harry brought Gracie some colorful bangles from his week in Africa and some wooden toys for Jack and bullet of fancy coffee for Louis, who made a show of ransacking Harry’s luggage for his present, but really just seemed happy to have him home. Harry’s face and chest were tanned, his nose freckled and peeling from days in the sun. He seemed different somehow, though Gracie couldn’t put her finger on it. He seemed reenergized from his time away and if Gracie couldn’t guess how much he’d missed Louis, she could tell by the sounds coming from their bedroom that night. Harry in particular, seemed to be auditioning for a porno.

Gracie slid her headphones on over her ears and queued up the Tallest Man on Earth album and tried not to think about her brothers having sex with each other in the room next door. Tried, and _failed_.

* * *

“Come on,” Harry nudged her. “We’re going out.”

Gracie groaned, rolling over to blink the sleep from her eyes. The red digits of her alarm clock read 8 AM. Harry was dressed in the over-sized hoodie Louis had been wearing all week, a beanie pulled down low over his wild curls and a pair of impossibly tight jeans tucked into chunky trainers. He looked more like he was sixteen than thirty and Gracie felt a little pang in her chest seeing him like this - preserved as he was in the earliest memories of her childhood.

“Get dressed. I’ll wait outside.”

Stumbling toward her dresser in the half-light, Gracie pulled on a pair of ripped skinny jeans and a loose sweatshirt, drawing her hair up into a messy knot. She stopped to look at herself in the mirror and was temporarily caught off guard – it was Louis’ big blue eyes staring back at her and the sharp cut of his cheekbones that greeted her.  It was Harry’s wavy dark hair and pouty mouth and long, lanky limbs that graced her frame. Gracie couldn’t see herself any longer without seeing _them_ too - projected over her like a double-exposed photograph. If Gracie thought living in their light would be easier than standing in their shadows, she’d been completely wrong.

Harry was waiting for her in the hall, hopping from one foot to the next impatiently, his camera bag banging against his hip. She wanted to ask where they were going, but then she remembered she wasn’t talking and just followed him down the stairs into the street. It was a perfect summer day and Gracie almost felt guilty for spending so much time inside, for hiding away from the world, but then she remembered that she preferred it that way. That it was easier when she was by herself – less complicated.

Harry seemed happy, smiling and swinging his arms and humming a tune under his breath that Gracie couldn’t quite make out. She wanted to ask him why he was in such a good mood – if it was because he was home with Louis and Jack again or if it was his time away that got him so up or the nice day or a combination of all those things. She didn’t fool herself into thinking _she_ had anything to do with it. All she was for them was a painful reminder of their old life – the live they’d run from.

Gracie tried to imagine herself being happy, but it all seemed abstract and hypothetical and out of reach. Trying to imagine herself happy was like trying to imagine herself as a pro footballer – something so completely outside the realm of her experience that it seemed a bit silly to want it or to know how to go about getting it.

Their long legs kept perfect stride with one another’s and Gracie couldn’t help contrasting it with how Harry walked with Louis – how he always slowed his pace or offered to push Jack’s pram so Louis’ short legs could keep pace. She wondered what that was like – slowing up or speeding down for someone else, giving someone else the kind of consideration Harry and Louis gave each other. She wondered, not for the first time, what they were like as kids, wondered when they had made the horrifying realization that they were in love with each other. They were so natural and easy around one another now, complimenting each other’s attributes so well, that it was hard to imagine they had ever had to struggle to be the way they are now, that they ever had to hide the best parts of themselves.  She was finally beginning to understand why they’d left – why they’d _had_ to leave – so they could become the people they needed to be.

Harry stopped at a quaint corner café with colorful flowers boxes in the windows and sidewalk tables spilling out on the street from the open French doors. Harry conversed with the hostess in perfectly accented French, punctuating the end of his sentence with a wink. With a shock, Gracie realized Harry was _flirting_ with her. She wondered if she should be upset on Louis’ behalf, but when they were given seats outside with a view of the Eiffel Tower, she stopped caring so much. A third chair was pushed up to the table some time later and Harry ordered three cappuccinos and some chocolate croissants and a fruit plate.  Gracie wanted to ask who it was all for, but then a beautiful, stylish woman was headed toward them with her arms out to Harry.

Harry jumped up and gave her a hug and a kiss on each cheek and then in a fluid move that nearly made Gracie spit out her cappuccino, he bent down to kiss her belly through her flowy top. Which - now that Gracie got a proper look at it - was very, very pregnant.

“Oh, this must be Gracie!” the woman gushed, leaning over to give Gracie a kiss on each cheek, which Gracie did not return. “Harry’s told me so much about you.”

 _Well, he’s told me nothing about you_ , Gracie wanted to say, but she bit her tongue, taking a scalding sip of her coffee and sinking down into her seat. “I’m Eleanor,” the woman introduced herself.

“Eleanor’s our surrogate,” Harry rushed to explain. “She carried Jack for us and now she’s carrying our daughter.”

“You haven’t told her?” Eleanor fretted.

“Gracie, I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, but with everything going on, it just never seemed like the right time.” Gracie shrugged, glancing away. With a start, she recalled Harry’s hushed phone conversations back in England and realized he’d been having them with this woman’s belly - so the baby would know his voice.

“Are you liking Paris so far?” Eleanor asked politely, taking a delicate bite of her croissant. Everything _about_ her seemed delicate - despite the fact that she was pregnant. She was thin and fine boned and her hair fell in perfectly styled waves around her face. Gracie hated her almost instantly.

“Uh, El, she’s not - Gracie’s not comfortable speaking at the moment.”

“Oh, well, if you ever need someone to show you around Paris – woman to woman, I’d love to,” Eleanor smiled genially, reaching across the table to squeeze Gracie’s hand. Gracie squeezed just a little too hard.  She didn’t like Harry being friendly with this woman, or _any_ woman really.  He was _Louis’_.

“Eleanor used to be a model,” Harry said conversationally, stirring a few sugar cubes into his coffee. “She could probably get you into Fashion week if you’re into that sort of thing.”

“Oh Harry, go on,” Eleanor slapped his hand playfully. “Oh,” she paused, putting a hand suddenly to her stomach in a move that made Gracie think she was suffering from indigestion. Without speaking, she took Harry’s hand and held it over her belly.

Gracie had never seen Harry’s face light up that way – except maybe when he was looking at Louis. She thought maybe if she looked at his face long enough, she could discern all the secrets of the universe. His smile was so big and beaming it was like something had _opened_ in his face, like she was seeing a window into some previously secreted part of him.

“Guess she likes croissants,” he said softly, fondly, staring at the place his daughter had kicked.

“Proper French baby,” Eleanor laughed.

“Feels like she’ll be a footie player like her dad,” Harry said, his hand still resting on Eleanor’s stomach. “Gracie, you want to feel?”

Gracie shook her head shyly, even though she _did_ want to feel. She should have said she did, but she didn’t.  She was sorry about that for a long time after - especially after the second worst thing had happened.

* * *

They parted ways with Eleanor after breakfast and Harry took Gracie to the Eiffel tower.  He insisted on taking about a million touristy shots of her from every angle. After that, they went to see the double decker carousel in front of the Hotel de Ville.  Harry insisted they both go for a ride, despite the fact that it was mostly for kids and tourists. Harry was smiling as they whirled around and around - smiling for all the world to see - with his eyes closed and his face turned into the sun.  Everyone was staring and Gracie knew it was because he was beautiful. She had always known as much, but she had never known it like she did that day. She wanted to tell them to stop looking - that Harry was hers and Louis’ and Jack’s, but then he opened his eyes and reached out his hand to her and she forgot people were looking at all because he had turned his smile on her and it was all she could see.

They ate a light lunch of fruit and cheese, sharing torn pieces of a long baguette and swigging bottles of pink sparkling lemonade.  They sat on a bench outside a Boulangerie where Harry seemed to know all the staff. Now that Gracie thought of it, Harry seemed to know _everyone_ in Paris. Everywhere they went, people waved at him or smiled at him or flagged him down to make small-talk. They made little progress in their walk, as Harry stopped often to chat with handsome strangers or to stoop down to pet someone’s dog or coo at a baby in its pram. He stopped to take pictures too and Gracie worried that it was getting late and Louis would be in a mood when they got home. Louis loved Jack just as much as Harry, but he got stir-crazy when he was left alone with the baby for too long.

Gracie was surprised when Harry pulled her into a tattoo shop around dinner-time, flirting and joking with the heavily tattooed and pierced woman at the front desk. He flipped absently through the books of tattoos on the table, pausing at one every so often that struck his fancy. “You want to get something with me?” he asked.

Gracie raised an eyebrow. She’d never given much thought to having a tattoo, but then, she hadn’t thought she’d be the sort of girl who lived in Paris either or the sort who kissed other girls, so maybe she hadn’t figured herself all the way out yet. Harry handed Gracie a pad of paper and a pencil. “Draw something and we’ll both get it.”

Gracie paused, wondering what she loved enough to get permanently tattooed on her body forever. And then, she wrote her parents’ initials and circled them with a heart.

* * *

It had been a while since Gracie had seen Harry without a shirt – he was quite a bit more muscled than she remembered – and no longer carried that bit of lingering baby fat around his middle. But it wasn’t his body itself that drew her eye – but the fact that it was covered in tattoos. Gracie had gathered from Louis that Harry was a bit of an exhibitionist, but that he’d had to tone it down since she moved in, so she’d only caught rare glimpses of him changing through the half-open doors. Seeing him head on, she could see there were two swooping swallows across his upper chest and Louis’ footie number above his heart and a whole mess of smaller tattoos on his arm. There was a thimble like the one he always wore around his neck and a tiny suitcase and a camera and an airplane.

Gracie got the tattoo on her inner wrist and Harry got it on his shoulder-blade, glancing up at her periodically from the magazine he was reading to see how she was faring. It didn’t hurt as much as she imagined. In fact, the pain was sort of exhilarating. It was the most she’d felt in a long, long time. She kept glancing at the bandage on the way home, reminding herself that it was there.

They stopped at the market to pick up dinner and when they got home, Louis was predictably in a mood.  He was sitting at the kitchen table, two empty bottles in front of him and a third half-full in his hand. “Where _were_ you?” he asked, without looking up from the table, where he was picking at the label on his beer.

“Gracie and I had a day on the town,” Harry grinned, setting their shopping down on the counter.

“Jack’s been throwing up all day,” Louis said raggedly, running a hand back through his unkempt hair.

Harry’s smile turned down into a frown. “Is he okay? Did you take him to the doctor?” he worried.

“ _Yes_ , I took him to the doctor,” Louis hissed. “He’s fine. Just a bug. I just now – _finally_ \- got him to sleep.”

Harry slid his arms around Louis’ chest from behind, leaning down to nuzzle his neck. “I’m sorry I left you alone with him all day. Maybe later I can-” Harry moved his mouth closer to Louis’ ear so only Louis could hear what he said next, though judging by the blush on Louis’ face and the tiny shiver that coursed through him, Gracie could only imagine it was filthy.

Gracie took that moment to go steal a pop from the fridge, holding the cool glass bottle to her stinging wrist. “Don’t ruin your dinner,” Harry called into the kitchen.

When Gracie returned, Harry quickly detached himself from Louis’ neck, a giant, purpling bruise left in the wake of his reddened mouth. Louis saw Gracie holding the bottle to her wrist and spun around to face Harry. “What’s happened to her wrist?”

“We got tattoos,” Harry grinned mischievously.

“Harry, she’s _fifteen_!” Louis sputtered.

“Don’t you even want to see what we got?” Harry asked sweetly, reaching for the hem of his shirt.

Louis stood up from the table, taking an angry pull off his beer. “How could you be so irresponsible?” he snapped. “She’s just a kid, Harry! We’re her parents now and we’re meant to make decisions regarding her future together.”

“Come on Louis - it’s just -”

“Don’t _come on, Louis_ , me,” Louis shouted, slamming his bottle down hard on the countertop. The glass unexpectedly burst, sending shards of green glass flying in all directions. Gracie instinctively leapt back and for a second, they all just stood there, frozen in place, staring at the glass on the table and floor, glittering in the last dregs of sunlight. Then Gracie saw the violent red pouring from Louis’ hand and gasped.  Blood was now spurting in rapid pulses from Louis’ wrist, too quickly to contain. He was staring down at it in disbelief, like he couldn’t comprehend that this was happening to him, that it was _his_ hand fountaining blood all over the floor and kitchen table.

Harry sprang into action, whipping his belt through the loops and tying it off around Louis’ bicep. “Gracie, towel,” Harry gestured to the kitchen, sliding a bolstering arm around Louis’ waist just as Louis looked about to faint.

“I’m fine. Really,” Louis said weakly, face gone paper white.

“You’re not fine,” Harry said firmly, grabbing the tea towel from Gracie’s hands to wrap around Louis’ wrist. “Here, keep pressure on this with your other hand,” he instructed, grabbing his keys and bag off the counter. They tracked bloody footprints across the floor and Louis’ shirt was already worryingly drenched. It looked vaguely like a horror movie and Gracie had to fight back the urge to vomit as the overwhelming, unmistakable stench of blood invaded her senses.

“Gracie, can you keep an eye on Jack while I take Louis to the hospital?” Harry called out, as he pushed the front door open with his back, still holding onto Louis, whose knees looked about to buckle. Gracie nodded mutely, the panic welling up in her throat. She couldn’t lose Louis, not so soon after her parents. Not without having spoken a word to him, without having told him that she’d been wrong about him, about _them_ \- that they weren’t sick, that they were really sort of sickeningly _perfect,_ if anything.

After they had gone, Gracie just stood there, staring at the door they’d just left through for a long, long time. The sun was going down and a siren was wailing up the boulevard, echoing in the still, evening air. For a few terrifying moments, Gracie wondered if she’d ever see Louis walk through that door again - there had been so much blood - but she knew if anyone could keep him calm and get him proper care it was Harry.

The quiet in the flat started to make Gracie feel panicky and helpless, so she fetched the dustpan and broom from the kitchen and carefully swept up the glass, taking care not to cut herself. When she was done, she got a roll of paper towels and some cleaning spray and mopped up the blood as best she could, periodically stopping to go out on the balcony and take deep breaths. She still couldn’t quite believe it had happened. One moment, they were arguing and the next, Louis was bleeding out on the table.  Because of _her_.

By the time Gracie had cleaned up, Jack was crying faintly, glassy-eyed and weak from being sick all morning. His cheeks were flushed scarlet, but he didn’t feel any warmer than he usually did waking up from a nap, so at least Gracie didn’t have to worry about him _and_ Louis. She got him into his highchair, trying not to think too much about the fact that the kitchen had been drenched in Louis’ blood only moments before. Jack banged his palms loudly on the plastic tray of his high chair, babbling as Gracie opened the fridge.

There was a neat row of glass canning jars on the top shelf (Harry made all Jack’s baby food himself in the food processor) and Gracie grabbed one at random and screwed off the lid. Jack managed to stomach most of it, but the rest ended up in his hair and all down the front of his bunny jumper. She stripped him to his diaper and set him in his bouncer while she ran a bath.

As she was running a soapy, wet flannel between the chubby folds of Jack’s kicking legs, she got a sudden, unexpected flashback of Louis giving her a bath in their old house. It was one of the rare times they were home from their travels and Louis had brought her a plastic mermaid with sparkly blue and purple hair that she instantly adored. She could picture the doll so clearly, though she had no idea where it was now - whether it had been sold off in the estate sale or was packed up in one of her boxes in storage. Thinking of it made her sad and she pushed it from her mind as she lifted Jack from the tub, wrapping him in a little terry-cloth robe with bear ears on the hood.

They were both beat by the time Gracie got Jack into a fresh diaper and one-piece pajamas with purple elephants dancing on them. Gracie changed into her own pajamas and they laid down on the couch together, watching one of Jack’s Baby Einstein DVDs. Gracie fell asleep at some point, with Jack heavy and warm on her chest and only stirred when she heard the door open and the sound of muffled voices in the foyer.

“I’m so sorry,” Louis whispered, feet dragging as he stumbled in after Harry. Their bodies were slumped over with exhaustion as they trailed into the kitchen, Harry un-shouldering his bag onto the counter.

“I told you, it’s fine,” Harry said evenly, voice no longer taught with anxiety.

Louis put the kettle on, opening and closing cabinets at intervals as he took out mugs and tea-bags. “It’s just...You don’t know what it’s like. I love you so much I can’t breathe sometimes,” Louis said, voice breaking on the words.

“ _I_ don’t know what it’s like?” Harry snorted incredulously, as he accepted the mug Louis handed him.  It was funny how even when they were arguing, their movements were perfectly synchronized.  Even when they were mad at each other, they had so much consideration and respect for one another.

“Do you know how much it broke my heart when you and Hannah dated in high school? When you brought her to all those formals? How badly I wanted it to be me?” Harry choked, voice thick with emotion. He took a quick, shuddering sip of tea and set it down again.

“You never said-” Louis protested as he stirred milk despondently into his tea.

“I’m not done,” Harry cut him off. “I never said anything when you dated Eleanor in Uni, even though I was so jealous I couldn’t see straight. I never said anything when I could hear you two having sex through the wall and I laid there wanking off and sniffing one of your old t-shirts, like the biggest saddo on earth.”

“Chick, if I knew, I wouldn’t have - You never said-” Louis said weakly, taking a tiny, defeated sip of tea.

“I never said because I _wanted_ you to. I wanted you to date them, so you could realize what I realized from the very start.”

“And what’s that?” Louis asked, voice worn thin with fatigue and shame. The hand not holding his tea was wrapped in white gauze and Gracie’s stomach churned when she thought again of all the blood. Harry had been so calm, had taken charge of the situation so quickly and efficiently, but if he hadn’t, if he’d panicked like she and Louis had, things could have turned out much differently.

“That there was only _ever_ us. That there’s no one else for me, but you.” Harry reached across the counter and stroked Louis’ hair affectionately. Louis’ fringe lay soft and limp across his forehead, free from the product he usually used to comb it into shape. Louis leaned up into Harry’s touch, butting into his open palm like a cat begging to be pet.

Harry’s voice when he spoke again was unbearably fond. “I’m going to love you until you’re old and gray and need Viagra to get it up in bed.” Louis opened his mouth to protest, but Harry plowed on. “I’m going to love you until you take your very last breath and probably even after that. And I hope to God I die the same time as you do because the thought of spending a moment in a world where there’s no you is the worst thing I can think of.”

Louis’ eyes fluttered shut, his grip tightening on his mug. The skin under his eyes were dark and bruised looking, shadows welling in his thin collarbones like pooled ink. Gracie found that she was scarcely breathing watching them. “But you’re always - _traveling_ \- and everyone loves you and I’m, I’m just _me_ -” Louis stammered obstinately. “I haven’t got anything to offer you.”

Harry lifted Louis’ chin from where he was staring down at his lap, crumpled forward in his seat. “Louis, you’ve got _everything_ to offer me. I love to travel, yeah. But you’ve always been my compass. You’ve always been the thing that brings me home again and you always _will_ be. So just shut up and come to the terms with the fact that I love you and that I’m not going anywhere...even if you are the biggest, stubbornest idiot I know.”

Louis grinned and Harry lent him a hand to stand up, abandoning their tea half-drank. Harry drew Louis into his arms, breathing in the scent of his hair, leaning back to kiss at the soft indentation at the base of his throat. Louis leaned up on his toes to kiss Harry, tentatively at first, but deepening as Harry looped a hand around Louis’ lower back, drawing him up and nearly off the floor.

Louis’ bloody tee-shirt was gone and he was wearing Harry’s oversized jumper in its place, tattoos showing through the thin fabric. His sleeve slid back as he reached up to touch Harry’s face, revealing his fine boned wrist, the swirling ink on his forearm like stains on his otherwise unblemished skin.

Their bodies were bathed in the moonlight streaming in through the French doors of the balcony, their features chiseled and stark in the white light, like marble statues from antiquity.  Something constricted in Gracie’s chest as she watched them kissing, hands and mouths warring for dominance.  Their coupling was as fierce as it was loving, as if they were struggling to put themselves together, to forcibly become one body and soul. It looked as beautiful as it did painful.

They were both breathless when they reluctantly released each other, gazing into each other’s eyes like they held all the secrets of the Universe.  Gracie wondered when her parents had found out - when her mom and dad had realized that their sons were in love, that something was different about them. She wondered if they’d tried to put a stop to it at first, though she knew trying to keep them apart would be like placing a tiny pebble in a fast moving brook. Her brothers had a lot of obstacles in their path, but they’d never hesitated to pursue each other.  Gracie’s parents had never spoke of it much - of what it had been like before, before they were her mum and dad and Louis and Harry were _LouisandHarry_. They were so inextricably intertwined now that it was impossible to think of one without the other immediately coming to mind.

“I’m going to put Jack to bed and when I get in there, you better be naked with your ass in the air. I’m on top tonight,” Harry growled low in his throat, punctuating his words with a slap to Louis’ bum.

Louis yelped, mock-scandalized, and scurried off towards their room, closing the door with remarkable restraint. Gracie’s face flooded with heat and she forced herself to close her eyes again, pretending to be asleep. Harry gently eased Jack from her arms, humming a lullaby under his breath as he carried Jack toward his room.

He returned a few minutes later and picked up Gracie and carried her to her own bed. She waited until he was gone to grab her headphones, cranking up the loudest punk album she had. She had a feeling it was going to be a long, _loud_ evening.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _As she watched Louis have a kickabout with Liam in the park, as she watched Zayn paint on their balcony in the waning light of evening, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, as she watched Harry crouch down and focus his camera lens to capture a fleeting moment, she wondered how they had all come to find their passions and how they had come to find each other. As she watched everyone around her change and grow, she seemed stuck, unwilling or unable to move forward, one foot still planted firmly in her old life. At night, a million questions ran through her mind, but they all boiled down to one, “how did you become someone that mattered?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! You all are a patient lot. Thanks for everyone's polite inquiries and kind words of encouragement about this story. In the interest of giving you something, I'm posting what I've written so far, though it will now be three parts and not two as I anticipated. (Hopefully the last bit will come a lot quicker than this part.) It's just one of those stories that's taken a long time to write and to put to paper and I want to thank everyone who's stayed with me on that journey. You're all the very, very best. :)
> 
> Comments and kudos are loved and appreciated and as always, my tumblr is: [everythingwaslarry](http://everythingwaslarry.tumblr.com)

**Indentions in the Sheets**

_But now we must pack up every piece of the life we used to love just to keep ourselves at least enough to carry on. And here's where your mother sleeps and here is the room where your brothers were born - indentions in the sheets, where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore_ \- Holland, 1945, Neutral Milk Hotel

 

***

A month passed and Gracie still wasn’t speaking. Louis had gotten her a notebook to write in after one particularly embarrassing incident involving the purchase of feminine products, so they were able to communicate, if a bit haltingly. The ashes of Gracie’s old life had settled and she was left trying to make sense of things - emerging like the lone survivor of a major catastrophe - stumbling, blind and mute, into the overbearing light of a new world.

It was a world she couldn’t help but fall in love with, _begrudgingly_ , inch by inch, like a person slowly lowering themself into steaming bathwater. Conforming made her feel guilty and low, like she was forgetting them little by little. It was like part of her – the _good_ part, the loyal daughter – had curled up and died along with them, but some hithero unknown part of herself kept going, staggering around like a zombie, embarrassingly, _desperately_ hungry for life. And no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t kill it. And no matter how much she didn’t speak, she couldn’t silence it. The new Gracie rose from the ashes like a twisted phoenix, shedding the burnt plumage of her old life.

The new Gracie was curious and inquisitive, starved for new experiences. She drank in life in dizzying, breathless gulps, the days flying by in a kaleidoscope haze of color and sound and light. Harry and Louis took her to the Louvre and the Pompidou, to Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle. For the first time in her life, Gracie was seeing works of art she had only previously seen in books and printed on novelty mugs. She stood in front of paintings with tears leaking from her eyes, digging her fingernails into her wrists until they left behind red welts. She wanted it to hurt. She wanted it to leave a mark. She wanted to know that she was still there somewhere inside, below the surface of the person she was fast becoming.

The world opened up to her like the pages of a book and for the first time she considered the possibility that there could be a life for her outside of England, that she could _want_ that. Each new experience wedged more and more distance between her and her past, their tiny, happy cottage in Holmes Chapel evaporating into memory, into story-book myth. Her parents had been to Paris only once – on her first birthday – so there was nothing here to remind her of them. Still, sometimes she swore she could feel them, in the wind moving through the branches of the trees, in a plume of cigarette smoke drifting lazily toward the sky, in a late afternoon shadow that fell across a blue door, leaving it half-obscured.

That summer was a whirlwind of new experiences and faces. It was hard not to get swept up in the romance of Paris - the vaulted ceilings of cathedrals and the dizzying lights of the Eiffel Tower and the well-dressed men and women, trailed by small dogs, leaving clouds of cigarette smoke and expensive perfume in their wake.

As time went by, Gracie found her resolve softening. She begrudgingly picked out a paint color for her room - a pale lilac - and Harry painted it one day while she took the train with Louis and Jack to see the Gardens of Versailles. Photographs quickly accumulated and Gracie put them in quirky frames that she found at swap meets and painted in outrageous colors and soon the top of her dresser was crowded with familiar faces.

Louis bought Gracie a table-lamp and some fancy cut-glass knobs for her dresser drawers. Harry bought her a record player so she could listen to his Vinyl collection in her own room - under the stipulation that she used headphones whenever Jack was napping. Lux lent Gracie some posters so her walls wouldn’t be so bare and Gracie slowly started to unpack her boxes of books and clothing, filling in the blank spaces in her new life with the things from her old life. The transition was so slow and unobtrusive that at first she didn’t notice - didn’t realize Harry and Louis’ life parting around her and closing once more to encompass her in it - like the tide coming in to swallow up a tide pool. She had spent so long trying to resist becoming part of a family - _any_ family - again, that when she finally realized what was happening, she was filled with dual parts wary acceptance and relief.

At home, Gracie had always been a bit of always been a bit of a loner - followed everywhere she went by the stigma of her brothers’ illicit affair - but here she was free to be herself (whoever _that_ was) or even reinvent herself if she wanted, and it was equal parts freeing and daunting.

As she watched Louis have a kickabout with Liam in the park, as she watched Zayn paint on their balcony in the waning light of evening, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, as she watched Harry crouch down and focus his camera lens to capture a fleeting moment, she wondered how they had all come to find their passions and how they had come to find each other. As she watched everyone around her change and grow, she seemed stuck, unwilling or _unable_ to move forward, one foot still planted firmly in her old life. At night, a million questions ran through her mind, but they all boiled down to one, “ _how did you become someone that mattered_?”

***

In between their world-wind adventures, Gracie offered to help get the flat ready for the new baby (still unnamed). Which was how Harry and Gracie came to spend an afternoon in mid-June sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of Jack’s bedroom, with instructions spread out before them, the edges held down by toy blocks so the breeze coming in through the open window wouldn’t whip them away. It was ungodly hot and they were damp with sweat even _before_ they started work. They puzzled over ornamental posts and lengths of wood as they slowly pieced together a crib and a changing table and a matching dresser. Harry had insisted on building it himself to save money, though Louis had wanted to buy it prefabricated. Louis didn’t gloat _too_ much as they slaved over their project and even brought them cold glasses of lemonade to soften the blow, crouching down to lick a stripe of sweat from the back of Harry’s neck.

Harry and Louis were beyond excited for the baby’s arrival and spent breakfast every morning with their faces buried in Baby naming books. Harry wrote _Emily_ on the chalkboard in the kitchen and Louis crossed it out and wrote _Olivia_ beneath it. Louis wrote _Tilly_ on the fogged up mirror in the Master bath and Harry carved _Gemma_ into a bar of soap. This soon escalated into an all out war that culminated one afternoon when Liam and Zayn were over and they were all lounging on the roof, drinking and eating and getting some sun.

“I think Cecily’s nice,” Liam mused, absently running his fingers through Zayn’s hair, where the boy’s head rested on his stomach. Zayn had his eyes closed, a contended smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he hummed agreement.

“Cecily? _Seriously_? She’s a baby, not a vegetable,” Louis scoffed, his face twisted in mock horror.

“That’s _celery_ ,” Harry quietly corrected him, chuckling under his breath. Louis threw a wadded up napkin in the direction of Harry’s head, but it missed and bounced unsatisfyingly off Liam’s knee.

“Daddy’s mean, isn’t he?” Harry whispered conspiratorially to Jack, as he rubbed more sunscreen between his son’s shoulder blades. Jack squealed, trying to escape Harry’s grasp. He was dressed in only a diaper and his arms and legs were already summer brown, his hair sugar white from the sun. He wasn’t quite walking yet, but he was crawling like a maniac and everything he found went straight into his mouth, including - earlier that day - one of Zayn’s discarded cigarette butts. Louis still hadn’t forgiven him.

They all looked at Zayn, who was trying to wave away a bee attracted to the scent of his coconut tanning oil. “Don’t look at me. My name’s _Zayn_.”

Gracie chewed thoughtfully on the end of her pen, pausing to jot something down in her notebook. She passed it to Harry, whose features immediately softened.

“Let me look,” Louis commanded bossily, trying to peer over Harry’s shoulder before wrenching the notebook free from his hands.

Louis gazed at it a long time, stroking his finger over the word, before looking up at Harry. Their eyes locked and like always, nothing and no one else seemed to exist for them, but each other and the new life they were bringing into being.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Louis grinned, eyes shining at the corners with unshed tears. Harry nodded in agreement.

“ _What’s_ it?” Liam asked curiously, craning up his head from where it was resting on a wadded-up bath towel.

“Anne,” Harry answered softly. “It was our mum’s name.”

For a second, everyone was quiet, but then before it could get too sentimental, Louis began to sing, “Little ditty about Jack and Anne-”

They all groaned, collectively throwing their rubbish at him at once. Louis held up his arms, laughing, and Harry leapt onto him, wrestling him down to the ground for a kiss. Embarrassed, Gracie forced her eyes away from them, focusing instead on a ladybug crawling over her knee, counting the dots on its glossy shell until it fluttered away and was gone.

***

A week after they’d decided on a baby name, Louis decided it was time to take Harry out on a date. It was something they had regularly done before - before Gracie, before the accident - but they hadn’t felt right doing since.

They hadn’t yet discussed school yet or what would happen in the fall, though Louis had begun to discreetly leave leaflets on Gracie’s dresser of private schools, all of which she promptly recycled. School seemed too final; too much like putting down roots. She knew her parents were dead, but some part of her still turned every time she heard a laugh that echoed her mother’s or saw a man with a funny plaid umbrella like her father’s. Her first instinct was still to call them every time she saw a funny dog on the street or had a bad day. It was a hard habit to break.

Gracie was lying on her bed listening to music and flipping through a magazine and it took her a minute to realize Harry was pacing outside her door. He passed by in a white jumper and then again without a shirt, tattoos bared, and then a third time in a purple t-shirt. Slipping off her headphones, Gracie crept out into the hall, where Harry was fussing in front of the full-length mirror. Gracie had never dated anyone, let alone for as long as Harry and Louis had, but she’d figured the butterflies would go away eventually. But here Harry was, as nervous as if it were his first date with Louis and it made her heart hurt a little because she couldn’t imagine loving someone like that. And worse, couldn’t imagine loving someone you _shouldn’t_ love like _that_.

 _All right?_ Gracie wrote in her notebook in purple sharpie, holding it up for him to read.

“Can’t decide what to wear,” Harry said exasperatedly, raking his hand back through his hair.

 _That black see-through shirt shows your tattoos nicely,_ Gracie wrote. Harry scanned the words and then grabbed Gracie by the shoulders, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Gracie, you’re a genius.”

Gracie rolled her eyes, retreating to the kitchen for a drink. She pretended to be annoyed, but it was nice to feel like she had an impact. She felt like nothing in her life anymore was in her control, like nothing she did or said would make any difference or bring them back (so why say or do anything at all?). It was silly, but it felt good that they’d chosen her baby name and that she could help Harry pick out a shirt for his date. They were just little things, but it was nice to know she was needed.

Of course, that feeling was undermined about twenty minutes later when Louis came into her room, knocking softly before he entered. “All right?”

She nodded. “So, I don’t want you think we don’t trust you with Jack, because we totally do! But we have a regular baby-sitter and he’s a bit older and I’d just, well, we’d _both_ feel more comfortable if he was here. He knows Jack’s schedule and he’s great with him and maybe when you’re a little older, we’ll consider more responsibility, but for right now-”

 _It’s fine_ , Gracie wrote, holding her notebook up.

“Great. We’ll leave you money for a pizza. He should be here in a half hour or so.”

***

Louis was still getting dressed and Harry was straightening up the living room, so Gracie answered the doorbell when it rang. There was a fit, blond boy standing on their front step, dressed in a loose vest and jeans and a backwards snapback. Gracie glanced behind her, unsure if he’d come to the right place. “Hi, I’m Niall,” the boy extended his hand eagerly. “You must be Gracie.”

She nodded slowly, wishing she had bothered to shower or like, _not_ wear cartoon pajamas. God, you think Louis might have _warned_ her. When Gracie didn’t immediately move out of the doorway, Niall grinned, revealing a mouth full of clear braces. “All right if I come in then?” he asked, in a soft Irish lilt. _Swoon_.

Gracie took a step back and Niall walked past her into the living room, obviously familiar with the place. “Hey Harry. Cool shirt.”

“Thanks mate,” Harry grinned, getting up from where he was excavating Cheerios out of the couch cushions with a handheld vacuum to give Niall a complicated handshake. _God, how embarrassing_.

Gracie hovered by the bookcase, pretending to be interested in a National Geographic book on the Galapagos Islands, but secretly flitting glances over in Niall’s direction. _Christ, he was fit_. Niall plopped himself down on the couch, propping his trainers up on the coffee table. He stretched his arms beyond his head, leaning back into the cushions with a grunting sigh. _Ugh, even his armpit hair was sexy. What was wrong with her?_

“So, where are you two going tonight?” Niall asked, chest heaving attractively under his loose vest. _God, Gracie. Get a grip._

“Dunno,” Harry shrugged. “It’s meant to be a surprise.”

“Ah, something disgustingly romantic then,” Niall teased Harry.

“Well, it is _Paris_ ,” Harry laughed good-naturedly. “How’re Maura and Molly?”

“Doin’ good. Where’s my man, Jumpin’ Jack?” Niall asked, craning his head to glance around the flat for the toddler.

“In his crib still. I had him take a nap before you came so he wouldn’t be too cranky. You can go wake him if you want.”

“Sounds good.” Niall’s eyes flicked over to Gracie at the same moment she realized the book she was pretending to look at was upside down. She hastily shoved it back onto the shelf. “Gracie, you want to help?”

Gracie nodded shyly, trailing after Niall into the nursery. She really, _really_ wished she had bothered to look more presentable. She hadn’t had a crush on anyone in ages, in fact, she couldn’t remember _ever_ having a crush on _any_ of the boys at her old school in England. They had all been brutish and rough, clumsily chiseled caricatures of the oafish men they would become, but Niall seemed different somehow. Like an entirely different species. He seemed so relaxed and confident; so inside his own skin. _And what skin it was!_ Milk pale with a red flush in his cheeks and blond arm hair so light-colored and fine he seemed to sparkle in the low light of the hallway.

The nursery was dark, but Jack was already standing up in his crib, sleepy-eyed and messy-haired. He held his arms out mutely for Niall to pick him up and Niall reached in and effortlessly hefted the toddler up. Jack immediately curled into him, burying his face into Niall’s neck, still drowsy from his nap.

“Hey there, buddy,” Niall kissed the side of Jack’s head, his wispy blond hair sticking up like chicken fluff.

Gracie loved when Jack first got up from his naps; he was always so warm and cuddly, clinging to you for a good twenty minutes until he’d properly woken up. Most of the time, he was a handful - crawling all over the place and putting inedible stuff into his mouth and generally getting up to no good - but for those brief periods between sleep and wakefulness he was as docile as a lamb.

“We’re leaving,” Louis called into the nursery. “You kids be good.”

Niall plopped down onto the couch in the living room again, letting Jack slowly get his bearings. Gracie sat next to him, with her feet tucked under her, leaving a good two feet of space between them. She picked at her peeling fingernail polish, avoiding looking at him directly. “So, what do ya want to do tonight?”

Gracie reached for her notebook, quickly dashing out a response. _I don’t know. They left us money for pizza?_

Niall’s blue eyes sparkled mischievously. “Whaddya say we go _out_?”

 _Are we allowed_? Gracie wrote, an anxious bubble forming in her stomach. Louis and Harry hadn’t said anything about _not_ leaving the flat, but it was sort of implied, right? Baby _sitting_ as in _sitting_ , as in _at_ _home_?

“I’m in charge tonight. Come on; let’s live a little. It’s a beautiful night. I’ll have us back in time to tuck Jack in.”

Gracie bit back a smile, slowly nodding her agreement. “Great.  Why don’t you get ready and I’ll get Jack dressed?”

***

Paris was enchanted at night. It was a far cry from day-time Paris - with its overcrowded shops and street vendors and the metallic din of the underground trains, with its businessmen and women dressed in the latest fashions hurrying toward the Metro, carrying coffees or newspapers or umbrellas. Every day, the same faces greeted Gracie - fishmongers and bakers and flower sellers - and there was comfort in the familiar, but it was just that - _familiar_.

At night, the Paris streets came _alive_ \- bustling with tourists and panhandlers and Parisians alike. At night, Paris was a city of reflections. The Sienne sparkled under the lampposts along the bridge. People’s faces were mirrored in the glass-plated windows of restaurants, talking and laughing, light catching along the stems of their wine glasses, winking off their jeweled rings and bracelets. The neon lights of the nightclubs and the Moulin Rouge reflected on the wet cobblestones in watery pastels that made you want to take up painting.

Gracie and Niall strolled slowly along, Niall pushing Jack’s pram and Gracie admiring the city’s sights. She rarely went out at night and there was something magical about it - a feeling of endless possibilities - and the fact that she was seeing it at the side of a beautiful boy she had just met, made her feel free and a little bit daring.

For dinner, they ate fat slices of pizza on paper plates soaked through with grease, standing on the bridge to watch hulking freighters pass below like whales, glacially slow. It was warm, but there was a breeze coming off the water, ruffling Gracie’s floral skirt and tickling her bare knees. They talked about their summer so far - well, _Niall_ talked and Gracie wrote - while Jack gummed handfuls of dry cereal and happily kicked his bare feet against the footrest of his pram. Niall’s blue eyes were intent on Gracie as she wrote and her skin burned under his gaze, overly conscious of her bitten down fingernails and the red spots on her arms where she’d scratched at bug bites until they bled. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her that way - if _ever_ \- and it made her stomach do somersaults, made her want to throw up and do cartwheels at the same time.

She was simultaneously relieved and disappointed when they moved on - grateful to escape the intense intimacy of their quiet conversation, their faces bent close together like drowsing tulips – but missing the heat of his eyes on her skin and the corresponding flutter in her stomach. They walked for a while with no destination in mind, but quickly stumbled onto the Fête Foraine du Jardin des Tuileries near the Louvre – a traveling summer festival with a Ferris wheel and a climbing wall and swings and trampolines and games. It couldn’t be further from their secluded spot on the bridge – the carnival was a cacophony of noise and random flashes of color that kept the eyes dancing from one thing to the next. The square was packed with rowdy teenagers and families with young children and couples holding hands and the random older person resting on a park bench or out walking a small dog, pausing to marvel at the spectacle.

Jack squealed excitedly when Gracie took him on the merry-go-round, braced securely in front of her on the white and pink horse with flowers in its mane and along its bridle. Niall sat backwards in front of them on the green frog, making faces at them and snapping pictures of Gracie and Jack on his mobile. “For Harry and Louis”, he explained, but there was an electric brightness in his blue eyes that made Gracie think otherwise.

They went on a few more rides and then sat on the curb and ate warm, doughy beignets from a paper bag dotted with grease until their stomachs ached, licking powdered sugar from their fingers. Even as it was happening, Gracie had a strange sense of nostalgia, like she would remember this night for years to come. She had already unwittingly begun her love affair with Paris, but it was so much more romantic and thrilling at the side of a boy she hardly knew, with a queer lightness in her stomach despite it being full of junk food, and the lights tilting around them like a kaleidoscope.

After they ate, they played a ring toss and a shooting game and Niall won them two stuffed animals – a penguin for Jack and a floppy brown dog for Gracie. By eight o’clock, Jack was asleep in his pram and Gracie knew they should go back, but she didn’t want the night to end.

Niall pulled the remaining tickets from his pocket. “How ‘bout one more ride?” Niall suggested. “I have just enough.”

Gracie nodded eagerly, heart leaping when Niall took her hand in his and dragged her off towards the Ferris wheel, expertly wheeling Jack’s pram through the crowd.

Niall handed their tickets to the ride operator and they got on, Jack asleep in Niall’s lap and Gracie’s bare thigh right up against Niall’s in the small seat. They didn’t say anything for the first few rotations, but Gracie could feel the heat of Niall’s curious gaze on her face. She looked out over the lights of the city and tried to make sense of her life. Just a few months ago, she never would have predicted she’d be here, in a foreign country with a beautiful boy beside her. It seemed like a fairytale, until she thought of her parents, and how every time she fell a little more in love with Paris, every time she smiled or had a good day, it felt like the worst kind of betrayal.

“It gets better, you know,” Niall said softly, startling Gracie out of her thoughts. When she turned to look at him questioningly, he wasn’t looking at her, but out at the city, his profile limned in rainbow light. The usual playfulness around his mouth was gone and for the first time she glimpsed something vulnerable under the cheerful veneer. “When I moved here a year ago, I was so angry. I was so angry that I had to leave my friends behind and Ireland behind and the only home I’d ever really known. But most of all, I was so angry that no one ever gave me a _choice_.”

Gracie stared at him, breathless, wondering how he knew without her even speaking it aloud how she felt. There were days she felt like the only person in the world carrying the albatross of grief around her neck, preventing her from ever feeling joy or happiness. She couldn’t imagine Niall angry – he was so happy-go-lucky and carefree – it was a bit like trying to imagine an angry golden retriever.

Niall looked down at Gracie’s hand resting on the bench between them – her chipped blue fingernail polish, the thin gold rings on her thumb and index fingers – and she couldn’t remember ever feeling so naked or vulnerable as she did then, like every flaw was on display under his scrutiny. She was just making to move her hand, to cover it with the other one, when Niall whispered, “don’t”, slipping his fingers between hers, trapping her there. His fingers were slightly sticky (no doubt the beignets), his palm damp with sweat, but it felt nice in hers. _Solid_. He stroked his thumb over hers, familiarizing himself with the ridges of her knuckle. Gracie’s body prickled with heat. When Niall gazed up at her with his big blue eyes, she thought she would melt into the seat.

“It gets better. I know everyone says that, but it does. Or at least, it hurts less. Give it a year, yeah? One day, you’ll look out at this city and it’ll look like home.”

Gracie reluctantly freed her hand from Niall’s to write in her notebook. _That’s what I’m afraid of._

Niall read it and frowned. “You know, I didn’t know your mum and dad, but I think they would want you to be happy. Moving on doesn’t mean you’re disloyal or that you’ve forgotten them. You just take them with you.” Niall tapped his chest over his heart, where Jack’s head was resting. “ _Here_.”

He gave her a wobbly smile, raw vulnerability swimming just below the surface of his blue eyes. Her eyes darted back and forth between his eyes and his mouth, his slightly chapped lower lip wet with spit. She had never wanted to kiss anyone so much in her life. “You’re lucky. Harry and Louis, they really love you. They _wanted_ you.”

There was something a bit envious about his tone when he said it that had Gracie writing _: Didn’t your parents want you_? She nearly scratched it out before Niall read it over her shoulder. It wasn’t her place. It really wasn’t. It was the just the night and the atmosphere making her feel brave.

“My real mam and dad didn’t. But my parents do, _yeah_. They chose me. Out of everyone. So I guess I’m lucky too.”

 _How did you meet Harry and Louis_?

Niall smiled a mouthful of clear braces as if fondly recalling a memory. “My mums run this Gay and Lesbian Parent Support Group out of our house. Harry and Louis joined when Jack was born.”

Gracie couldn’t conceal her surprise. Niall was so well-adjusted, so _normal_. She would have never guessed Niall had same sex parents. Not that gay parents were _incapable_ of raising well-adjusted kids (Jack was proof enough of that), but usually the taunting and the teasing that went along with being different made _you_ different. Or at least it had for Gracie. Maybe Niall was stronger than she was.

 _Your mums are gay_?

“Yeah,” he confirmed with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders, as if it were no big deal.

She was remembering the kids at her school back in England, the notes they used to shove into her locker when her back was turned: _Do they fuck you too_?

Her eyes welled up at the memory, but she sucked back the tears. She wouldn’t cry. She _couldn’t_. Or else she would never stop.

Gracie chewed a moment on her pen cap a moment before writing _, But isn’t it hard_?

Niall chuckled, red cheeks shining. “Hard having two parents that love me? Not really. Some of the other kids are twats about it, but I’m not too chuffed. Like I said, I’m _lucky_. If it weren’t for them, I don’t know where I’d be.”

Where would _either_ of them be if the bomb hadn’t gone off - if Niall’s parents hadn’t given him up, if Gracie’s parents hadn’t left her an orphan one night on a lonely stretch of English roadway? The only thing Gracie knew for sure is that if both those things hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t be here with Niall right now. And she wouldn’t have gotten the chance to reconnect with her brothers and nephew. Or see a brand new place. And it was weird to think that. That the chapter of her old life - her life with her parents - had to end for her new one to begin. In a way, her parents’ death was her becoming. But just _who_ was she becoming, just who would she decide to be? A silent, bitter girl who stewed in past injustices or someone like Niall - happy and free; content to go where the world took her? Maybe there was no such thing as lucky people; maybe there were only people who took nothing good in their life for granted.  Gracie wouldn't mind being like that.

Gracie nearly opened her mouth, nearly talked aloud, but instead she let her pen dig a hole into her notepad, keeping her lips pressed together in a thin line. It was nice having someone who understood what she was going through, who didn’t automatically think she was a freak. Gracie had never really considered the idea that she could have a normal life again – not after her parents’ death, not after she came to live with her gay, incestuous brothers - and not only normal, but maybe even _extraordinary_?

Niall’s eyes moved over her face, carefully considering. She wanted to hold his hand again, but she didn’t want to reach for him first, so she let it rest between them. Her fingers felt heavy. Niall gave her a tiny, encouraging smile. She wondered what his teeth would look like when his braces came off. She wondered what they looked like _before_. She wondered what it would feel like to run her tongue over them. Niall bumped her shoulder with his. “When you’re ready to talk, I hope you’ll talk to me. I think maybe we’d have a lot to talk about.”

Gracie blushed, lowering her face to stare at her lap. The ride pulled to a stop and the attendant opened the safety bar and they spilled out into the night again, the silence pregnant with the words she couldn’t say.

***

After Niall changed Jack into a clean nappie and pajamas, after he read _Good Night Moon_ and sang two Irish ballads, after he tucked Jack in for the evening, he crept out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him with a soft click. Gracie had already changed into her pajamas (nothing with cartoons this time) and twisted her long hair up into a sloppy bun and put on a pot of tea. When he found her, she was sitting on the couch with the tellie on low, pretending that she wasn’t just straining to overhear him sing lullabies to her nephew. Niall had a nice voice –pure and no-frills, but steady and _purposeful_. Gracie hoped one day she could have the easy kind of confidence Niall seemed to have in spades.

Niall kicked off of his trainers and plopped down on the couch, taking the proffered mug of tea from Gracie’s hands. “Cheers.”

Up close, in the steady glow of the television, Gracie studied the tiny constellation of moles on Niall’s cheek, the soft gold dusting of hair on his arms, like spun candy floss.

“Tonight was nice,” Niall said carefully, after they’d been watching tellie in silence for several minutes.

Gracie nodded slowly, unsure of where the conversation was headed and not wanting to embarrass herself, to reveal too much. “Maybe we could do it again sometime? Just the two of us?” His voice went embarrassingly high, cracking on the words. “Like…like a _date_?”

Gracie couldn’t help the grin that erupted across her face, though she quickly schooled her face back into something approximating neutrality. _Louis_ , she thought, recalling the way he looked at Harry sometimes and then glanced away quickly, like he was trying to conceal his fondness, to not reveal all the cards in his hand. I got that from _Louis_.

 _I’d like that_ , Gracie wrote in her notebook, angling it so Niall could see it.

Niall let out a relieved sigh, scootching closer to her on the couch. He took her hand in his once again and surprised her by bringing it up to his mouth to plant a whispering kiss over her knuckles. Gracie’s scalp burned and she turned her face away to hide her blush.

***

Lux was over two days later, helping Gracie go through her closet for stuff to give away. Harry wanted to store some of his spare camera parts in her closet, space becoming tighter and more precious as the arrival of baby Anne grew closer.

They were making very little progress, as Gracie couldn’t think of anything worse than being cooped up inside on a sunny day, and besides everything reminded her of England and home. Her father had never been a big shopper, but growing up, she and her mum used to go all the time. They’d spend all Saturday ducking in and out of the shops and when their feet were falling off from walking, they’d get hot chocolate at the bakery where Harry used to work, talking and eating with their faces close and their bags crowded round their feet, the windows fogged up with their breath and laughter and the heat of the convection ovens. For the longest time, it was _their_ thing, just the _two_ of them. And then, Gracie had gotten older and her tastes had changed and everything Anne picked out for her was all wrong, and besides she wanted to shop by herself or with someone her own age, because no one shopped with their mum - _no one_.

Gracie wished that they hadn’t left her at such an awkward time in her life, when everything they did embarrassed her. She remembered having her dad drop her off a few blocks away from school and walking the rest of the way so she wouldn’t be seen with him. She remembered rolling her eyes at her mum when she asked her to take the rubbish out to the kerb or do the washing up after dinner. She remembered spending as much time as she could up in her room away from them as she could, talking to strangers on the Internet because it was easier than opening herself up to her own family.

“What about this?” Lux asked, holding up a dress Gracie’s mum had gotten her for a school dance she’d never gone to. It still had the tags on it.  It was still hideous.

“Keep?” Gracie shrugged and Lux tossed in onto the pile with the others, before collapsing back onto the bed with a groan. Gracie turned back to the closet, flicking through the hangers. “So…I think I might have like a date?”

“What?” Lux sat up quickly, dislodging a pile of shirts onto the floor. “When? Who? Where? How?”

Gracie laughed. “It’s not…I mean, it’s not a big deal,” she said, trying to downplay it so she wouldn’t seem as nervous as she felt. “Just this guy. Jack’s babysitter.”

“ _Niall Horan_?” Lux gasped. “You’re going on a date with Niall Horan?” she gaped. “ _How_ did this happen? _When_ did this happen?”

“You know him?” Gracie asked, picking at her cuticle and trying to look casual as her heart pounded over loud in her head.

“Um, _yeah_ ,” Lux rolled her eyes, which today were outlined in dramatic dark eyeliner and specks of silver glitter. “ _Everybody_ knows him. He goes to my school. Oh my God, tell me everything.”

Gracie shrugged, flopping down onto the bed next to Lux, on top of a mound of purses, the buckles digging into her spine. It hadn’t occurred to her that Lux might know Niall. That night they’d spent together, he’d seemed part of a different world, a different Paris, one full of magic and potential, separate from everything and everyone else. She knew it was silly, but she felt a little sad at the thought of sharing him with anyone else.

“There’s not much _to_ tell. We just – we took Jack out the other night to the carnival and like…later that night he asked me.”

“Gracie, this is huge!” Lux said, smacking her own forehead. “He’s like the most popular kid in our school.”

Gracie’s stomach shrank. “Oh. Does he…does he date a _lot_ of girls?” Gracie had been so happy Niall asked her out she hadn’t even considered that she might just be one among many.  He was a bit older and really cute and fun and easy-going; why _shouldn’t_ he have dated other girls?

“Not _a lot_ a lot... I mean, he’s hooked up with girls, _sure_ – But like, okay, so my friend Nathalie really had the biggest crush on him for forever and they kissed one time at this party, but then he was all weird and evasive after when she tried to call him.” When Lux saw the crestfallen look on Gracie’s face, she rushed to explain. “I’m sure that was a different situation though! Nathalie can be kind of clingy. And he’s never like…asked anyone on a proper date that I know of.”

Gracie let out a sigh and flopped back onto the bed. She’d been so excited, but now she just felt… _deflated_. What did she _really_ know about Niall anyway? Besides the fact that he was cute and Irish and had two mums? “Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“No, no you definitely should,” Lux rushed. “I’m sorry I opened my big mouth. I mean, _obviously_ he likes you! Oh my God, what are you going to wear?”

Gracie looked despondently at the mess around her. There were clothes all over the floor and her bed and a few things still dangling from hangers in her closet, but none of them looked remotely appealing. They were all too small or too childish or several seasons out of style. “I don’t know. I wish my mum were here,” she said softly, frustrated tears springing unexpectedly to her eyes.

Lux hopped to her feet. “I know just the thing! I’ll be right back.” Gracie opened her mouth to protest, but Lux was already out the door. She returned with Louis in tow, dragging him along by the hand.

“Lou, Gracie has a date with Niall Horan and you _have_ to help her pick out some clothes.” Louis lifted a curious eyebrow at Gracie, but didn’t say anything. Gracie covered her face and let out an embarrassed moan between her fingers. Lux was awful. She hated Lux. Why had she ever considered the girl a _friend_?

Lux kicked her with one ratty Converse high top. “Come on, Louis is great at this. He helped me find my Winter Formal dress.”

Louis put his hands on his hips, surveying the mess with a frown. “Why don’t we go shopping?” he asked brightly. “I know a great boutique. El used to work there in Uni.”

***

Two hours later, they were home again, Gracie with several new garment bags hanging up in her closet. It had been ages since she’d gone shopping and she’d grown out of a good deal of her clothes in the last year, shooting up three inches in height over the course of several months. Louis was growing increasingly disgruntled that both Harry _and_ Gracie could reach the top shelves in the kitchen now, while he had to cart around a step stool to get down a colander or mixing bowl from the top cabinet when he needed it.  (Not that he often did - he tended to stay out of the kitchen.)

They managed to find the perfect outfit for Gracie’s date with Niall – a pale purple sundress that brought out her dark hair and blue eyes – and a black, fitted cardigan to cover up if it got cold. Louis picked out a few other things for her as well – a blue blazer, a striped blue and white t-shirt, an airy blouse in both cream and blush, some brightly colored skinny jeans and two pairs of ballet flats – insisting she’d need them when she finally decided on a school. The bill was well over four hundred Euro, but Louis handed his credit card over without complaint, even treating them both to a Frappuchino at Starbucks afterwards.

Gracie had to admit, while she wouldn’t have picked out most of the clothes on her own, everything fit great and the cuts were extremely flattering. She felt like a proper Parisian girl now. It was nice to see Louis in his element too – ordering around intimidated young sales girls and tossing clothes to Gracie and Lux to try on over the fitting room door.

Before that day, if Lux had to choose, she’d say out of both her brothers, she was closest to Harry, who was extremely easy to get along with and always concerned about others’ welfare before his own, but she was beginning to think she’d given Louis an unfair shake. While he wasn’t as sensitive or nurturing as Harry, he had other attributes that made him fun to be around – like his sharp, sarcastic sense of humor and his eye for fashion.

Exhausted from their day of shopping, Lux and Gracie sat slumped over at the counter while Louis heated up a pot of Mac and Cheese on the stove (which was about as advanced as his culinary skills got) in the adjoining kitchen. He slid a bowl across to each of them when it was done, having his own standing up, alternating between eating and pulls of his beer. Gracie pulled out her notebook and wrote, _Thank you_ , sliding it across to Louis.

“Welcome,” Louis grinned, his blue eyes sparkling. “I have to admit, I’m not thrilled with the idea of you dating. But I suppose if it had to be anymore, I’m glad it’s Niall.”

Gracie blushed, stabbing some way too much macaroni with her fork and shoveling it into her mouth. Louis and Lux both laughed and Gracie slid down in her seat and tried not to think about how, more than anything, their gentle ribbing made it feel like…like they were _family_.

***

Niall picked up Gracie early in the day on Sunday, enduring several minutes of questioning from Harry and Louis before they were allowed out the door. Niall brought Gracie a bushy bouquet of lilacs tied with a silk ribbon that matched her dress. Harry set them in a vase of water, which he placed beside her bed and insisted on taking a picture of them before they left. Gracie was too embarrassed to chance a glance at Niall, but she had a good feeling both their faces were tellingly red.

Niall and Gracie walked slowly through the streets, limbs leaden in the heavy summer air, taking covert, blushing glances at each other. It was several blocks before Niall worked up the courage to take her hand. At the train station, he bought their tickets from the kiosk and let her have the seat by the window. She watched the French countryside rolling by and couldn’t decide what was more beautiful - her new country or the boy sitting beside her.

Niall wouldn’t tell her where they were headed, but Gracie began to suspect by the time she saw signs for Giverny. Gracie had flagged Monet’s Garden as a place to visit in her guide book, but when she’d thought of going, she’d always pictured being here with Harry or Louis, Jack toddling along in a bed of tulips shoulder-high. But it was nice with Niall, _different_ , but nice. Like the carnival in Paris – in spite of all the tourists milling about, it somehow felt like theirs alone - their secret garden to explore.

Niall made whispered asides to Gracie during the walking tour that had her giggling breathlessly and earned them both a stern glance from their guide. When the guide wasn’t looking, Niall stole foxglove seeds for Gracie to plant in the flower boxes at her flat. They stood holding hands on the Japanese bridge, covered with bushy purple wisteria, and looked down at their watery reflections amongst the water lilies in the still green water.  When he kissed her for the first time under the iron arches where the climbing roses grew, she involuntarily gasped into his mouth and before she had time to be embarrassed or pull away, Niall was dragging her back in, with a hand at the small of her back. She felt weightless, like Niall’s hands were the only thing keeping her on the ground, from floating up into the clouds like a feather on the breeze.

They ate a picnic lunch in the shade of a weeping willow, batting away fat bumblebees and kissing unhurriedly, lips stained red and sweet-tasting with strawberry juice. Niall produced two moleskins and a box of pencils from his rucksack and they spent the afternoon quietly sketching each other and their surroundings and laughing at their piss-poor renderings. Gracie bought a box of stupidly expensive watercolors for Zayn in the gift shop and a stuffed Fox for Jack. By dinner time, they were both drowsy and warm, cheeks and bare shoulders pinks from a day in the sun. They walked closely together on the way back to the train, holding hands and bumping shoulders, and Gracie couldn’t remember the last time she was so happy.

On the ride home, she fell asleep with her head in Niall’s lap, his hand absently stroking through her dark curls until sleep took her under, smiling into her dreams.

***

Gracie continued to go on dates with Niall throughout the summer and each was as wonderful as the first, even and perhaps _especially_ , the low-key ones where they just sat on the couch watching movies and eating pizza with her brothers and Jack. Gracie met Niall’s mums and spent a handful of Sunday afternoons gardening with Maura and a few days a week in the kitchen with Molly learning to cook. Maura, blonde and red-cheeked, was a stout, no-nonsense Irish woman, who worked as a social worker in the city. Molly was a passionate, red-headed pastry chef and there was no doubt that Niall had inherited his sunny disposition and love of food from her. His mums were complete opposites - Maura level-headed and Molly free-spirited - but together they worked. They were an odd bunch, but they fit. And Gracie was beginning to think she did too; that the ragged band of friends and relations she’d accumulated in her time in Paris were something close to family.

Gracie had been so afraid to open herself up to hurt after her parents’ death, that in her effort to keep out the pain, she’d kept out everything good as well. Niall was a big factor in her decision to finally decide on a school, to start thinking of making a permanent life in Paris. She was nervous about starting over at a new place, but it was a little easier knowing that there would be some friendly faces there - in particular, Niall and Lux’s.

Louis and Harry set firm rules about when and where Niall and Gracie were allowed to be alone together, but they managed, like all other devious teenagers before them, to sneak in some furtive snogging when her brothers ran a quick errand or went into another room. There was something exciting about it that way – the possibility of being caught looming over them, the desperation of trying to sneak in covert touches here and there. They hadn’t gone further than kissing, but not for lack of wanting it. Niall had cupped Gracie’s breast beneath her jumper and over her bra one night, but otherwise they settled for just holding each other and kissing, kissing, kissing.

One night, when Niall was over babysitting and Jack had gone to sleep, they were kissing on Gracie’s bed when Niall shifted his weight and oh – _oh_. Gracie broke apart from him, gasping for air, face flaming with embarrassment. “Sorry,” Niall blushed, reaching down to adjust himself.

“Do you want me to –” Gracie stopped, unsure how to finish the sentence. She had seen her baby nephew naked before and once, Harry’s arse when he was getting into the shower, but she’d never actually…seen a guy up close when he was… _excited_ and the prospect was absolutely terrifying. She had no idea what to do or how to make him feel good. And she was scared to do something wrong and risk him not liking her anymore, or worse, not do anything at all and risk him not liking her for that.

“Do you _want_ to?” he panted, eyelids heavy with lust. “You don’t have to. If you’re not ready, we don’t have to do anything.”

“I just – does it hurt?” she squeaked, eyes darting down to the bulge pressed against his zipper.

Niall blushed, biting his lip. “It aches a little after a while, but no, not really.”

“Is it like that…because of me?” she asked in a tiny voice.

Niall snorted, reaching up to stroke her hair. “You know I’m very fond of you, yeah?”

Gracie nodded, her throat gone dry. “I want to – to do that stuff with you, but I haven’t and I just - ”

“Hey, hey,” Niall took her face in his hands; thumb stroking over her cheekbone as he stared into her eyes. “We have all the time in the world, okay? And I’ll wait for as long as you need me to.”

Gracie buried her face into his chest, hiding her relieved expression into his collarbone. “Thanks.” Niall hugged her closer, careful to keep his hips tilted back so his hardness wouldn’t brush against her.

“Have you…have you with girls before?” she asked, in a trembly voice that sounded so unlike her it was as if someone else had asked it. Niall was two years old than Gracie and two years more experienced and she couldn’t help but think back on her conversation with Lux, on all the things she didn’t actually know about Niall.

Niall paused for several drawn-out seconds before answering, long enough for Gracie’s body to stiffen in the cage of his arms, heart hammering at her ribs in trepidation. “Yeah. A few times.”

Gracie felt suddenly and inexplicably like crying and she rolled away from him onto her back, crossing her arms over her chest and staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t know why it felt like a betrayal; Niall didn’t even know her then and his body was his to do what he pleased. Maybe it was because she felt like a child and she didn’t want to feel like that with him. With him, she felt different – not like a little kid, not like Harry and Louis’ baby sister – but grown-up and sophisticated, a person in her own right. And now, she just felt… _small_.

“Are you upset?” Niall asked tentatively, running a finger gently down her arm. Gracie hated herself for the goose-bumps it raised, for the way her body reacted to his stimulus without her consent.

“Why do you like me Niall?” she asked in a quavering voice.

Gracie felt a heavy weight on her chest, like the world was pressing down on her from all sides. Like her parents were dead all over again. Where was she when the accident happened? What was she doing at the exact time of their deaths? Something ordinary, like brushing her teeth or playing with Hester or reading a book up in her room. Did she pause in whatever she was doing, did the hairs prick up on the back of her neck, did a shadow move across her face like a passing storm cloud? Did she somehow instinctively _know_ , did she _feel_ them leaving the world, leaving her? Or did it just feel like any other moment?

The truth was, Gracie had been blindsided. She couldn’t recall having any premonitions or visions or bad feelings. Until the phone call, she couldn’t remember that day being distinguishable from any of the rest in her life. The very worst part was how little the world actually _changed_ when her parents died. Nearly everything stayed exactly the same – the mailman arriving like clockwork on his route, the rain continuing to gather in puddles in the drive, people commuting to their jobs or school like nothing had happened because for them, nothing _had_. The only thing that changed was _her_. Everything and everyone kept moving on but her. And she was so angry at herself after, because if anyone _should_ have known, if anyone _should_ have seen it coming, it was _her_. But she didn’t.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean – Lux told me you hooked up with a lot of girls at school and I wondered why you haven’t…with _me_.”

“Gracie, my past is in the past, okay? I’m not going to make excuses or apologize for it. Because it’s made me who I am today. But it’s just – it’s not like that with you.”

“Because I’m damaged?” she asked, swallowing hard. Was that _it_? Did he see her as a princess asleep in her impenetrable fortress of grief, waiting for a prince to wake her up to her new life? Was she just some charity case to him?

Niall sat up, staring down at her incredulously, his blue eyes hard as flint. “Jaysus. Is that what you think of me, Gracie Lou?”

“I don’t know,” she cried, her eyes blurring with tears. She was filled with dread, with the sudden, horrible premonition that he was going to break up with her. That she should have seen this coming too. That her whole life would be like this forever – horrible things happening to her without warning, without end. “No one’s ever – no one’s ever bothered to get to know me before.”

“Do you really want to know why I like you?” he asked.

“Yes. _Please_.”

“Because you’re the first person that looked at me and saw me for who I was. Not because you thought I was cool or popular or you could get something from me. You make me happy to be alive. You make me happy to be in the world because you’re in it. You know you’re the first girl I ever let come over to my house? And you love my mums and they love you and you never judged me or made me feel like I was less than. So no, it’s not because you’re damaged. Or if it is, it’s because I’m just as damaged as you.”

“Niall?” she asked in a tiny voice. “I’m really frightened.”

“Oh, love,” he drew her close to him and she breathed in the familiar, comforting mix of his cologne and deodorant and skin. “Would it help to know that I am too?”

“Ever since they died,” she sniffed. “It’s like I’ve been waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me again and whenever something good comes along, it’s like, I can’t let myself believe it. I can’t let myself _enjoy_ it.”

Niall kissed her hair. “That’s how I felt before I was adopted. Being shuttled around from place to place, never knowing when or _if_ I’d find a real home. I was a total brat to my mums the first few months after my adoption, because I was waiting for them to leave me too. I was giving them a reason to give up on me. But they didn’t. And neither am I. I’m not going anywhere, okay? You’ll have to try harder than that to get rid of me.”

“I like you so much it scares me,” Gracie said softly, cheeks wet with tears.

Niall kissed the tip of her nose. “Then we can be scared together, yeah?”

“Can we…could we kiss again?” she asked shyly, nosing at his cheek.

“Darling, I’d love nothing more.”

***

Harry was sitting on the balcony, reading a book when Gracie woke up, plopping down next to him in her pajamas, hands curled around a mug of tea. “Morning sleepyhead.”

She gave him a tiny smile. “Did you and Niall have a good night?”

Gracie choked on her tea, but managed to swallow, her whole face heating up. It wasn’t as if anything had actually happened between them, but it _could_ have. She’d – she’d _wanted_ it to. After their talk, they’d ended up just kissing for the rest of the night, Niall’s erection digging into her hip acting as a constant reminder of all the things she wanted to do with him, all the ways she wanted to take him apart. Lately, her whole body felt it was burning up from the inside out, like Joan of Arc tied to the pyre of her lust. She wanted to know if Niall had freckles on the rest of him too, wanted to know if the blush that flooded his cheeks spread to his chest as well, wanted to know what he looked like naked and hard and a little bit desperate for her.

She went inside and came back out with her notebook and a pen from the kitchen. _Can I ask you something_?

“Always.”

 _When did you and Louis first have sex?_ Gracie turned her notebook toward him and Harry’s face turned bright red, mouth open in a small 'O' of surprise. “Are you and _Niall_ …?”

She shook her head vehemently and Harry let out a relieved sigh. “Good. Right. Well, I was sixteen and Louis was eighteen. I wanted to earlier, _much_ earlier, but he made me wait.”

_Why?_

“Because he didn’t want to hurt me. Because he wanted to be sure it was what I wanted. And I’m glad I waited. When you’re young, you let your body make decisions for you sometimes, but like emotionally, I’m not sure I would have been ready earlier. Sex is natural and it’s not something to be ashamed of, but it’s not something to rush into either.”

 _Were you scared_?

“Yeah. It’s bad enough when you’re young and you want a boy and you know you shouldn't, but when it’s your own _brother_ …” Harry let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It scared me how much I wanted him. It felt wrong and right at the same time. I know it’s hard to believe, but when I was younger, Louis was really my only friend. I used to be really shy and introverted. Some of my teachers thought I might even be autistic. I depended on Louis for everything. I couldn’t conceive of myself or my life without him in it.”

Harry paused, taking a sip of his tea. “When Louis wanted to start dating other people in Uni, I was devastated. I went off the deep end. The only thing that stopped me from killing myself was knowing it would have destroyed him. It was a horrible time for me, but I’m happy for it now. It forced me to get a life. I made my own friends, got really into photography, got an internship. I realized my dependence on him when I was younger was really unhealthy. That’s why it’s good that you have Lux and your friends and family. It’s easy to get caught up in love, but you shouldn’t forget yourself. Are you and Niall…have you talked about it?”

_Yeah. I don’t think I’m ready, but I think about it. A lot._

Harry laughed. “That’s normal.”

 _You won’t tell Louis, will you_? Harry snorted. “He’d lock you away in a convent. You’re still his kid sister, you know? He doesn’t want to admit you’re growing up because it’ll mean he’s outgrown his usefulness to you.”

 _He hasn’t._ “Good,” Harry squeezed her hand. “You want some breakfast? I can whip up some Eggs Benedict. It’s Lou’s favorite.”

Gracie nodded, laying down her notebook and picking her tea back up.

That afternoon, before dinner, Harry came into her room with a box of condoms in a crumpled paper bag from the drugstore, carrying them close to his chest like he'd just robbed a bank. “Hide these, okay? Louis will skin me alive if he knows I’ve given them to you. I know you said you’re not ready, but it’s just always better to be prepared. You’re old enough to make your own decisions, but I just want you to be safe, okay?”

Gracie hugged him tightly and didn’t let go until Lou called them in from the kitchen. “Chick!  Gracie!  Dinner’s ready, you two. Stop mucking about.”

Harry and Gracie looked at each other and burst out laughing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Gracie didn’t know how to tell her parents that the other kids at school teased her mercilessly...Even her teachers whispered about it when they thought she couldn’t hear and some of the cruel ones, well, they didn’t even bother to whisper. Gracie stuck up for them at first - stuck up for the boys who had given her baths and kissed her scrapes and built her blanket forts in the living room, the boys who had lifted her up in an airplane above their heads, who had told her more interesting stories about the world than all the storybooks crowding her bookshelves ever could. But then, they stopped coming round and the images started to fade and warp, to curl in at the edges. She started to believe the lies they told about them and she hated them as much as anyone, maybe even more._
> 
> _And now, she was going to live with them._
> 
> ****Sequel to Circles****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has sent me kind messages about this fic here and on tumblr over the months and gently prodded me to update. I have sat on about 13 pages of this for a long time, unsure of how to proceed. The truth is, I think I was sad to see this fic go. I really loved writing it and I really loved the characters and I always hate to take leave of characters I love. 
> 
> But you all deserve to have an ending. So here it is. Hope you like it!
> 
> Tumblr is: [everythingwaslarry](http://everythingwaslarry.tumblr.com) as always.
> 
> Comments and kudos are amazing and I will do my best to reply to all of them! xx

**Indentions in the Sheets**

_But now we must pack up every piece of the life we used to love just to keep ourselves at least enough to carry on. And here's where your mother sleeps and here is the room where your brothers were born - indentions in the sheets, where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore_ \- Holland, 1945, Neutral Milk Hotel 

September came too soon. The outdoor tables and chairs at sidewalk cafes were stowed away for the season and the trees along the avenue came out in their brightest colors. The air smelled of wood smoke and sodden leaves and the sharp bite of coming frost. Gracie felt sick with longing for England – for the simple pleasures of village life – a warm cuppa and a cozy window-seat watching the rain, her snake, Hester, curled around her arm to the elbow like a set of bangles. 

She was scared of starting school - of starting over at a whole new place - but Louis bought her a new wardrobe to soften the blow and Niall held her hand in the corridors and she and Lux had a few classes together, so it wasn’t _all_ bad really. No one bullied her like they had at her old school, but no one really talked to her either and it was getting harder and harder not to speak. 

The teachers had been notified of her condition, but some of the students thought she was rude or snobby (which couldn’t be further from the truth). Everyone at her new school seemed cosmopolitan and sophisticated and Gracie couldn’t fathom what someone like her - a backwards girl from the English countryside - might have to offer them. They’d all spilled into school on the first day, salt-brown from the summer holidays and chattering away about vacations in the Maldives and Greece. Gracie had only ever visited those places in books and among the pages of Harry’s photo albums and she felt that inadequacy acutely here. She tried not to care about what they thought, but she still came home a few days a week in tears, curling up in Louis or Harry’s lap until the crying abated and she felt partway normal again. 

It wasn’t anything anyone said or did necessarily. For the most part, people were content to ignore her and go about their days. Gracie was like a background prop or a piece of scenery in a play about someone else’s life. She wore the right clothes, she ate the right things and hung out in the right places, but she was never really _one_ of them. She felt all wrong in this life and in her changing body, like an imposter. Even worse than not fitting in or speaking the language, even worse than not speaking at all, was that all anyone at her school ever seemed to be talk about or think about was sex. Every secluded hallway she turned down, she stumbled upon some couple or another snogging and groping each other up against the lockers. Even in the loo there was no escape - the metal doors riddled with filthy Sharpie renderings – and the occasional sound of two bodies thumping up against the walls of the handicapped stall. 

Even Lux was getting hot and heavy - though _she_ wasn’t content to date just one person - she had a boyfriend who attended a nearby Uni _and_ a girlfriend who worked at a coffee shop in the eleventh arrondissement. Gracie wasn’t _prude_ or anything - she’d _thought_ about sex a lot - she’d just never _done_ anything to speak of. More and more, sex began to feel like some secret society everyone was apart of. Even Lux. Even Niall. Even her stupid brothers. It was just another thing that made her feel different. 

Since their talk about sex, Gracie and Niall had kept strictly to snogging and some above-clothes touching. He’d cum once on accident - just from snogging and the friction against her thigh - but then his mums had walked into the living room and Niall had had to sit through an entire movie with wet trousers and a flaming red face and they didn’t try anything again for a long time after that. 

One Saturday night in October, when Niall’s mums were at some charity gala, they finally got a night to themselves. They were watching a movie together on the couch when Niall slid his hand under her skirt, thumbing over the outside of her cotton panties. “Can I?” he asked softly, like he was sharing a secret. 

Niall’s eyes were still carefully focused on the telly, but his breathing had gone slightly irregular and there was a red flush mottling his fair skin. He was practically neon in the dark. Gracie’s stomach clenched, dual parts arousal and nerves. 

“Yeah,” she managed to squeak. “Yes. _Please_.” 

Niall pushed aside the fabric, stroking his finger gently over her lips before dipping inside her. She shivered, the hairs on her arms rising. He took his time adding another two fingers, working them in and out, thumb flicking up to brush over her – oh – _oh_ – Gracie sucked in a sharp breath, pleasure sparking through her entire body. _That_ was new. 

Niall leaned over and kissed her, wet and open-mouthed and sloppy, his erection pushing against her bare thigh as he plunged his fingers in and out of her. It was a lot - his fingers and his hardness and his mouth and his heat - crowding her into the corner of the couch. She felt simultaneously trapped and like she didn’t want it to end. 

“This okay?” he asked, pulling back to search her face. 

She nodded, face flushed, the scent of her sex heavy in the air. No one had ever touched her _there,_ including herself, and it was weird and scary, but also exciting. Gracie was terrified she’d do something embarrassing like moan out loud or that he’d be grossed out by how wet she was or how much hair she had there, but at a certain point it felt so good she stopped thinking about it. A strangled cry escaped her as Niall pushed deeper, hooking his fingers. 

“Mmm,” Niall kissed her exposed neck, sucking bruises into her skin. “You’re so wet for me. Can’t believe I’m inside you.” 

Gracie’s whole body flushed at his lewd words, back arching as he thumbed over her clit. “Please,” she panted. 

“Please what?” he teased, blue eyes dancing with mischief. 

“I want to –” She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted – she just knew there had to be some sort of release valve to let out all the pressure building in her belly, something he could do to quench the heat between her shaking thighs. 

Niall smirked and increased the pace of his fingers. His head disappeared beneath her skirt and a second later, she felt his mouth and tongue, inside her, flicking over her, licking her out. Gracie gasped. It was so filthy and unexpected, but so, so _good_. It wasn’t long before her knees drew together, clamping down on Niall’s ears as her spine drew as tight as a bowstring. Convulsions passed through her - warmth flooding her belly - body shaking apart as she came with her fingers tightly clutching Niall’s hair. 

_So that was sex. That was the mysterious ‘cumming’ everyone at school talked about._ No wonder they were all so obsessed with it. 

Niall came up for air, face flushed, mouth obscenely wet and red. From _her_. “You taste so good,” he murmured, burying his face in her neck shyly. “Want to do that all the time.” 

“Can I…? I want to see you,” Gracie gasped, fumbling with his flies. Niall panted as she fished his erection out of his pants. In the soft blue glow of the television, it looked painfully red and slightly wet at the tip. For a second, Gracie just stared at it in awe and trepidation. She’d only ever seen naked guys in her health textbook and on the Internet and occasionally a passing glimpse of one of her brothers through a cracked bedroom door. Male genitalia was so _out there_ in a way her own wasn’t, but it also wasn’tweird at all because it was _Niall_ and it was an extension of his body, so _of course_ she liked it. Plus, it made _her_ excited to see _him_ excited, to know she’d had a part in making him so hard, so desperate. 

“I’m not sure what to -” 

“It’s okay,” he gave her a soft smile. “I’ll show you.” Niall took her hand in his and they wrapped around him together. He was so hard and hot in her hand, so _responsive_ to every twist of their joined wrists. Gracie felt sort of powerful touching him - eliciting soft, breathy sighs from his lips \- knowing she had the ability to make him feel that way. 

“Shit, sorry. I’m not usually -” Niall warned, before unexpectedly releasing over her hand and wrist. 

Gracie went to the bathroom to wash her hands and when she came back, Niall’s head was resting against the back of the sofa, face hidden in his palms. “Sorry, that was embarrassing. I’m not usually so quick,” he mumbled through his fingers. 

“Are you kidding?” Gracie sat down, nosing at his collarbone. “That was like...it was _really_ sexy.” 

“You just...you don’t know what you do to me,” Niall panted, letting his hands drop from his face to tangle in her hair. 

Gracie nipped at his earlobe playfully. “So tell me.” 

“You just...you make everything new. Everything feels like the first time with you.” He leaned over and kissed her nose. 

She blushed, burying her face into his neck, smelling the salt of his sweat and the heavy musk of his cologne. She wanted to press him into the pages of her diary and keep him there, something precious and secret and all her own. 

*** 

Apart from attending school, one of her brothers’ stipulations while she lived under their roof was that she’d attend therapy once a week. 

“If you won’t talk to us, you have to talk to _someone_ ,” Louis had insisted, as he picked an eggshell out of the scrambled eggs he was currently butchering. Harry was gone for the weekend on a fashion shoot in the Outback, so Gracie had no backup, and she knew Louis wouldn’t budge. Not on this. He could be mulishly stubborn when he wanted to be. Gracie was beginning to think she’d inherited it from him. 

_Why don’t you talk to someone?_ she’d scribbled angrily in her notebook, holding it out to him with a defiant tilt to her chin. 

Louis laughed. “You think I _don’t_? Harry and I both do.” 

Gracie considered that as she aggressively scraped the char off her blackened toast with a butter knife. None of her _mates_ had to go to therapists. Going to one meant something was _wrong_ with you. There wasn’t anything wrong with her. Her parents were dead; she had a right to be upset, didn’t she? She had the right to speak or not speak to whomever she wanted to. If she went to a therapist, it would be like admitting she damaged somehow. 

But then, there wasn’t anything _wrong_ with Louis or Harry either and _they_ went. Although, until recently, Gracie _had_ thought something was inherently wrong with them, something sick about what they did with each other. So what had _changed_? 

_I’m not going_ , she wrote. 

Louis shook his head, cracking a window to wave out the smoke from the stove with a dishtowel. “It’s non-negotiable.” 

_Why do you hate me?_ she’d scratched, pen digging a hole into the paper. 

Louis rolled his eyes. “This isn’t a punishment, Gracie. It’s meant to help you.” 

In the end, Gracie went because she didn’t want to lose her privileges - getting a small allowance, having an eleven o’clock curfew, being able to go out with Niall and Lux a few nights a week. Her mates were the only thing that made her life here bearable most of the time, so in the end, the thought of being locked away in her room for the entire semester compelled her to go. 

Harry drove her to her appointments every Wednesday after school let out and took her to a fancy restaurant when it was over. It was nice getting one on one time with Harry, without Jack screaming in the background or Louis commanding his full attention. Harry was charming and goofy and affable and he was always kind to the wait staff. She didn’t even mind his dad jokes all that much. After a while, Gracie even started to look forward to Wednesday nights. 

And therapy, well, it wasn’t as awful as she’d envisioned it would be. Gracie’s therapist, Katherine, was small, but vivacious. She dressed in a neatly pressed pantsuit for their appointments and always made Gracie feel important. Her bookshelves were full of interesting things - books and fossils and jade elephant figurines - and her office was cozy and intimate, not at all clinical like she thought it would be. It reminded her more of a yoga studio than a doctor’s office. 

Gracie didn’t talk at the first appointment, but Katherine taught her some breathing exercises to help her cope with stress and talked about what she hoped to accomplish in their time together and the hour passed quickly. 

By their second session, Gracie felt herself gradually opening up to Katherine. 

“I want you to get the most out of our sessions together, Gracie. And to do that, we’re going to need to communicate. So whether, that’s writing on paper or speaking - it’s up to you. I will say the time goes a lot faster if we’re not just sitting here staring at each other.” 

_Will you tell my brothers what I say?_ Gracie wrote. 

Katherine shook her head. “Everything you say to me is confidential. That means, I can’t tell anyone, even my family or my partner. Everything you say will stay in this room, between us. The only case I _would_ say something is if I thought you posed a threat to yourself or others. But I don’t think that’s the case with you, is it?” 

Gracie shook her head. _What are we supposed to talk about_? 

Katherine smiled kindly. “Anything you want. Once I know a little more about you, we can set some goals for what we want to work on in our sessions, but for now, we can talk about whatever you like - about school or your friends or your brothers. Whatever comes to mind. Why do you think your brothers wanted you to come here?” 

_Because they think something’s wrong with me. Because I don’t talk._

“First, let me say there’s nothing wrong with you, Gracie. I’m not trying to fix you because there’s nothing broken. I’m just trying to help you live your life more authentically. Harry tells me you’re exceptionally bright, that you get good grades in school. That you help him with Jack. That you have a boyfriend.” 

Gracie blushed. Even though it was all good things, it was weird to think of Harry talking about her to a virtual stranger. “You seem like a well rounded individual who’s had to deal with extraordinary circumstances. We all have ways of different methods of coping with grief and trauma. I want to teach you better ways, more productive ways. I respect your choice to stay silent and I never want to make you feel unsafe or threatened. But silence is just not viable in the long term, is it?” 

Gracie shook her head. “Have you spoken to anyone since your parents funeral?” 

_My boyfriend and my best mate, Lux_ . 

“Well, it’s good to hear you’re talking to someone.” Katherine smiled, angling her chair so her whole body was open to Gracie, making her seem attentive and receptive. “Why do you think you haven’t spoken to your brothers?” 

“At first, I guess I was angry at them for leaving,” Gracie said, in a soft voice that sounded strange even to her own ears. She thought of Harry, sitting in the waiting room flipping through a parenting magazine and felt a jolt of guilt. 

“Okay. And now?” 

Gracie hung her head, fiddling with a charm on her gold bracelet. Louis had bought it for her when they last went clothes shopping and again, it filled her with guilt. _They were trying, weren’t they? In their own way?_

“They never talk about them. Mum and dad. It’s like - it’s like they never existed. I know it was hard for them to live in Holmes Chapel - after everything \- but when they left, it felt like they were trying to get away from it all. Including _me_. And now I’m just - _there_. And I’m just this - this _inconvenience_ \- that reminds them of the past they tried to leave behind. I don’t belong in their little family. I don’t belong anywhere really.” 

Katherine nodded, jotting something down in her notes. “Gracie, these are all valid feelings you’re having. And it is worrying that they haven’t tried to talk to you about your parents. But, haven’t they made other attempts to include you? Bought you things, included you in plans, cooked meals for you?” 

Gracie shrugged, sinking back into the couch cushions. “That’s just because they have to.” 

“No one _has_ to do anything, cherie. They’ve gone out on a limb for you. Maybe it’s time you met them halfway.” 

*** 

That night, Gracie was quiet throughout her dinner with Harry. He’d gotten them reservations at a trendy, new hot spot that was getting write-ups in all the papers, so the chatter of nearby diners was enough to drown out what would have been uncomfortable lulls in conversation. For his part, Harry filled the spaces around her silences, chatting about his travels and his plans for the week and his excitement over the new baby. 

Gracie kept glancing down at her lap and her hands, as if trying to convince herself she still took up space. “Everything okay?” Harry asked after a time, eyes going soft and serious. 

Gracie frowned, pushing her pasta around with her fork. _Why don’t you ever talk about them?_ she wrote on her napkin, turning it to so he could see it. 

Harry’s face fell and he took a hurried sip of wine. “I think because I felt guilty. That I wasn’t around. Not that I could have stopped the accident, but...I guess, I just always thought we would have more time. I mean, I spoke with them both on the phone and we’d talk about things we wanted to do together, vacations we would take, andI’d say, _Oh, Jack’s in a phase, we’ll do it next summer. Or, my photography’s really taking off; it’ll have to be next Christmas._ But there never _was_ a next Christmas. Or a next summer. And I’m so mad at myself,” Harry choked, eyes brimming with tears. 

“I’m so mad at myself because I missed all those moments with them that I can’t get back. And I missed your childhood. I missed you becoming the woman you are now. I kept putting it off because it was painful for me to go home. But then, in the end, I didn’t have a home to go back to.” 

_Louis_ , Gracie wrote and Harry smiled through his tears. _He’s your home now_. 

“Yeah. He is. He always was.” 

_That’s why you had to go, wasn’t it?_

Harry nodded, putting his hand over hers on the table, giving her fingers a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. And I’d like to talk about them more with you. Keep their memory alive. If that’s what you want?” he tested cautiously. 

Gracie nodded slowly, in shock that he’d finally acknowledged the thing that had been so much on her mind these past few months, weighing down her tongue like it was cased in lead. _Speak_ , she urged herself, pinching her thigh through her tights. (Tights Louis had bought for her.) If there was ever a time to speak, it was now. All she had to do was open her mouth. All she had to do - 

But then the waiter arrived with the dessert menu and Harry ordered them both a cappuccino and some seasonal berries with crème fraîche and the moment passed. The moment she’d been waiting months for, maybe even her whole _life_ for, flew away like a leaf on a breeze. Gracie knotted up the napkin in her lap like she was trying to wring something out of it. Like it contained all the words she’d been unable or unwilling to speak because they tasted too much like lies or anger or grief, or worst of all like _truth_. 

Gracie looked down into the frothy foam of her drink, wishing she were stronger, braver, wishing she were more like her brothers. Wishing she was anyone but her. 

*** 

Baby Anne’s due-date was fast approaching, so Gracie wasn’t surprised to come home from Niall’s one night in late October to find Zayn and Liam camped out in the living room. Liam had his head in Zayn’s lap and Zayn was absently carding his fingers through Liam’s hair as they watched an old black and white movie on TV. There was a spread of open takeaway containers on the coffee table and a basket of folded laundry on the lounger, the baby monitor resting on top. They looked as if they’d been there for ages. 

Gracie slipped off her shoes and dumped her backpack on the floor, moving the laundry aside to sit on the lounger. 

Zayn gave her a soft smile, hand stilling in Liam’s hair. “Hey babe. How was Niall’s?” 

Gracie pulled out a notebook from her backpack. _Are they are at the hospital? Is she here?_ she jotted down eagerly, passing the paper to Zayn. 

“They left a few hours ago. We haven’t heard anything,” Zayn yawned, covering his mouth with the sleeve of his grey jumper. “Did you eat already? I can heat something up for you.” 

Gracie wrote: _Molly cooked_ , holding it up so Zayn could see. He nodded, eyes flicking back to the movie. Gracie went to her room to change into her pajamas and wash her face and peered in on Jack before she came back with a blanket and a book. 

Zayn glanced over at her. “You don’t have to stay up. We can wake you if we hear anything.” 

She shrugged, picking up her mobile to text Niall. _Home safe. xx Baby is on her way!_

_Aaahhh! Send me a pic when you see her! xx_

Gracie settled in to reading her book, but soon her eyelids were drooping shut and her eyes kept running over the same lines, unable to make sense of them. She startled awake some time later when she heard the front door close, her book sliding off her lap onto the floor with a muted thump. 

Gracie jumped up to greet them, but froze when she saw the look on Harry’s face. His cheeks were wet and raw and the skin under his eyes was red and puffy. Louis had an arm cinched tightly around Harry’s waist and Harry’s whole body was slumped into his. He looked like a puppet with its strings cut. 

“Is -” Zayn started to say. Louis just shook his head slowly, lips pursed. Harry let out of a wretched sob, darting for their bedroom. Louis sank down onto the couch, holding his head in his hands. 

“There were complications,” he said in a strange, hollow voice. Zayn and Liam immediately surrounded him, rubbing his shoulders and his back, touching everywhere they could reach. Gracie was frozen to her seat, ice water slithering down her back. _The baby - Anne - where was Anne?_ Gracie’s throat felt like it was going to close, her skin too close and too tight for her body. _Where was Anne? Why wasn’t she with them_? 

“Is Eleanor okay?” Liam asked. 

Louis nodded, clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. “She’s fine. Thank God. She’s going to her mum’s country house for a while to recoup. Anne - the baby - wasn’t so lucky.” 

Louis’ eyes flicked up for the first time and saw Gracie sitting on the edge of her seat, her whole body rigid. “Come here, Gracie Lou,” he gestured and she ran over and sank into his lap, just like she was a kid again. His arms folded around her like wings, enclosing her, keeping her away from the world. Louis had always been physically small, but to Gracie, in that moment, he felt like a giant. His love for her felt enormous and unshakable. And for the very first time, like it might not be enough. 

_Anne was dead. The baby was dead. Her little sister was -_

“I’m sorry,” Louis cried, arms squeezing her tight. She wasn’t sure why he was apologizing - none of this was his fault - but she let him. Until his words became wet and garbled and his tear-stained cheek stuck itself to her hair. 

She felt like the world had come unraveled again. Like she was back in the wake of a horrible disaster, but this time, Louis was right here. And he wasn’t going anywhere. She clung to him tightly and she forgave him. 

*** 

Gracie woke up to Niall’s text: _???? U didn’t send a pic?_

_Baby was stillborn_ , she typed, still lying in bed. Sunlight was just beginning to seep over the edges of the city, setting the windows aflame one by one. Paris was gray and still, blue slate rooftops extending as far as the eye could see, an endless sea. Gracie wondered if Harry and Louis were awake yet, if they felt as awful as she did, the crushing realization bearing down on her all over again. 

_U want to talk?_ Niall’s reply came quickly. 

_Can you come over?_

Gracie didn’t wait for him to answer. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, Niall was there, kneeling by her bed. He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I’m so sorry.” 

Gracie gave him a weak smile and pulled the covers back so he could crawl in. He was still dressed in his pajamas. His clothes were cold and his skin and hair smelled of outside, of wind and leaves and the river. Of _Paris_. When she first moved here, Gracie never thought it was a smell that would bring her comfort, never thought that it would smell like home. She nuzzled her face into his chest, breathing him in. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, stroking her hair. It was badly tangled from sleep and his fingers kept snagging in her curls. 

“Why do bad things keep happening?” she murmured into his skin. “When will I get to keep something?” 

“I’m sorry. You’ve got me though. You can keep me.” 

Gracie let out a shaky sigh, biting her lip. “I think maybe...I’m _ready_. To be with you. _Now_.” 

Niall pulled back to stare at her. “I can’t, babe. Not like this. Not when you’re upset. But I _want_ to. I really, really want to,” he grinned. “The next time you’re ready, I’m yours, okay?” 

“I just - I need to feel close to you,” she whined, verging on desperate. She couldn’t face his rejection on top of everything. She knew it wasn’t personal, but it still stung. 

“There are other ways to feel close,” Niall insisted, pulling her to him. 

“You’re hard,” she squeaked, surprised. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, embarrassed as he shifted his hips away from her. “S’like that in the morning sometimes. And when I’m in bed with pretty girls.” Gracie pulled him back, so she could feel him lined up against her hip. 

“It’s okay. I like it.” 

Niall shivered, keeping his body very still, as if he were exerting every ounce of self-control he had. 

“I can’t wait,” Gracie said softly, hotly, against his ear, feeling like her body was not entirely her own. Like she wasn’t entirely in command of her limbs or her mouth, which kept moving and making words. “I can’t wait to have you inside me.” She felt Niall twitch against her before he pulled away again. 

“Jaysus Gracie. You can’t – You’re not helping any,” he laughed, exasperated, but his face was tellingly pink, his eyes dark and hooded. She felt him reach down between them to adjust himself. 

“Let me,” she insisted, rubbing her palm over the front of his pajama pants. He wasn’t wearing any pants underneath and she could feel him straining against his flies, the warm length of him encased in soft flannel. It made her feel wild. Out of control. “Want to make you feel good.” 

“Gracie, come on, this isn’t you,” Niall said softly. 

  
“What, because I actually want sex like all your _other_ girlfriends?” she asked, a bit hysterically. “Because I’m supposed to be a prude?” she asked, pushing her fingers through his flies to grasp his cock, crudely. 

“You’re twisting my words, Gracie. Fuck. Stop,” Niall grasped her wrist, wrenching her away. 

“ _Why_? You’re hard, aren’t you?” 

“Doesn’t mean I’m in the mood,” he snapped, irritated. 

“Please, I just want to-” she reached for him again and he pushed her back a second time. 

“I said _no_ , okay? I’m not doing this in the room next to your brothers’.” 

“It’s not like we haven’t before,” she rolled her eyes.   
  


“Gracie, they’ve just lost a baby. I’m not doing this right now, okay?” 

“Maybe you should just leave then,” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest. She wasn’t angry at him, not really. But she couldn’t deny it felt _good_ to be angry, to feel it bubbling beneath her skin like magma, to feel the holy fire in her bones. 

“Fine,” Niall bit off. “If that’s what you want.” 

“Just go. Just leave like everyone else,” she shoved him. He staggered back, blue eyes sad as she shook his head at her. 

He put on his shoes and coat with his back to her, wound the scarf around his neck that Louis had bought him Christmas last, and all Gracie could think was _come back come back come back_. But she didn’t say anything. She _never_ said anything. 

“Call me when you actually want to talk,” he said when he finally closed the door behind him. 

Gracie felt like her chest was caving in. She stared up at the ceiling and started to cry, hot tears rolling down her cheeks to pool in her ears and throat. She wondered if she could cry enough to dissolve her whole body, to erode herself down until she was a couple of rings in the mattress, the imprint of a life. 

*** 

_Do boys like flowers_ ? Gracie wrote on the chalkboard in the kitchen, where Louis was attempting to make Jack some lunch. Whatever was in the pan looked bright orange and smelled burnt. 

“You don’t have to get Harry or I anything,” Louis said, obviously misinterpreting the reason for her question. 

_For Niall_ ? she wrote. _I messed up...really, really bad._

Louis tilted his head at her curiously but didn’t ask any questions. “Why don’t we bake something? I can drop you off at Molly and Maura’s on my way to the hospital. Still have some paperwork to sort through.” 

She nodded and then below her last words wrote, _I’m sorry too_. 

He flicked off the burner with a defeated sigh and gave her a one-armed hug, Jack giving a squawk of protest at being squashed between them. “Why don’t you call for pizza for lunch? Then we can get to baking.” 

Gracie hoped he was a better baker than cook. 

*** 

She stood on Niall’s doorstep, in the misting rain, wishing Louis hadn’t already pulled away. She felt like an idiot. A horrible, pushy non-consenting idiot. 

Niall answered the door in nothing but a pair of loose joggers that hung off his narrow waist, accentuating the deep V of his hipbones, among other things. Gracie hated her life. “I brought you some cookies,” she blurted, shoving the foil-wrapped plate at his chest.   
  


“You brought me cookies,” he repeated evenly, crossing his arms and leaning up against the doorjamb. Gosh, even the way he _leaned_ was sexy. 

Gracie wished he were less... _naked_. Less heart-stoppingly beautiful. Just… _less_. It was hard to look at his face when there was so much skin... _everywhere_. Gracie looked at her feet instead – at her slightly turned in toes – a mirror of Harry’s pigeon-toed gait. On Harry, it seemed endearing. On her, it just looked awkward. 

“I’m _sorry,_ okay _?_ I’m sorry I was a total git. I’m sorry I pushed you to do something you didn’t want to do. You always respect my boundaries and I didn’t respect yours and that’s shit. That’s more than shit,” her voice wobbled. She felt like crying again. Lately, she _always_ felt like crying. 

  
“Gracie, I’m not mad at ya. I mean, it’s pretty shit you tried to pick a fight, but I get it. Your sister just died.” He took the cookies from her and she buried her face in her shaking hands. 

“It’s my fault. I wished - I didn’t _want_ her - I wished she were never born and then - she never _was_.” 

“Come on. It’s freezing out here,” Niall looped an arm around Gracie’s neck and dragged her inside. She didn’t even realize she was shivering until Niall shut the door and set the cookies down on the table in the foyer, the only soundtrack the crinkle of foil and the chatter of her teeth. 

He pulled her into a tight hug, resting his chin on top of her head. When enough time had passed, she tried to slip out of his hold, but he just tightened his embrace – just stood there holding her for the longest time, not saying anything. 

Gracie’s mind was running in a million different directions. She was a horrible person and she didn’t deserve any of it – not Niall, not Louis and Harry and Jack, and certainly not Anne. It was her fault Anne died. It was her fault her parents died. It was _all_ her fault. She was like a disease; she infected everyone and everything she touched. 

But the more she wrestled with her thoughts, the more she struggled against Niall, trying to escape his unearned love, the more tightly he held her. He held her until her thoughts went quiet and she could focus on the sound of their intermingled breathing and the heat of Niall’s bare chest through her jumper. She must have been crying because when they finally pulled apart, his collarbone was wet, but she wasn’t crying anymore and his steady blue eyes were there to ground here. 

The house was warm and smelled of Molly’s cooking. Gracie felt like something had melted inside her, a chip of ice that had been lodged in her breastbone, making it hard to breath. She felt warm and loose and sleepy. 

“Mums, Gracie and I are going up to my room,” Niall shouted into the kitchen. 

“Leave your door open,” Maura shouted back. 

“Will do.” Niall rolled his eyes at the ceiling before leading Gracie upstairs. He pulled an oversized burnt orange jumper out from his closet and she nearly sighed out loud in relief when he put it on. It was hard to be properly upset when he was so…so _naked_. They sat down on his bed cross-legged and facing each other. Niall pulled a cookie out from under the foil. He sniffed it and deeming it edible, shoved it in his mouth whole. 

“Mmm...thanks for the cookies,” he grinned, spraying crumbs onto the sheets. 

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.” 

“No. No more apologizing, okay? Come here and give me a proper cuddle.” Niall finished his cookie and set the plate aside, holding his arms out to her. She crawled into them and they laid down, her head resting on his chest. He smelled of chocolate and fabric softener and a faintly musky scent unique to him. 

“You know, I want to do those things with you,” he admitted softly, tugging through the tear-damp snarls in her hair. “But not when you’re upset.” 

“I know,” she sighed. “I guess I just thought – if we could – I thought maybe I could get out of my head. Escape it all, even for a minute.” 

“Gracie Lou, you know I’m always here for you and I’ll be a lot of things for you, but I don’t want to be your escape. When we do – do _that_ – it’ll be because you want to; because you’re in your right mind. Not because you’re running away from something.” 

“Do you think – do you think it was my fault?” 

“No petal, I don’t. These things happen. And for the record, I think you would have been a great auntie. Just like you are to Jack.” 

“Yeah,” she replied sleepily, burying her nose into his throat. “I think so too.” 

*** 

When Gracie woke up, hours later, it was to someone gently shaking her shoulder. “Gracie, honey, wake up.” 

“Mum?” she asked groggily, still suspended in that moment between sleep and consciousness where her mum was alive. But when Gracie lifted her head, it was Maura standing there, with a sad look on her face. 

“No, it’s me.”   
  


Gracie had dreamt she was back in her bed in England. She had dreamt of two boys with strong legs and loud laughs, running through the garden after one another, of initials carved into the wood of her bed and desk, of the soft, secret way she sometimes caught them gazing at each other across the breakfast table. She dreamt of home, of the place her brothers had fallen in love in so long ago. And for once it didn’t feel like she was suffocating under the weight of their legacy. She felt warm and happy and loved and she woke up with tears in her eyes. 

It took a minute to orient herself. It was dark and she was in Niall’s room. In Niall’s bed. With – 

“Oh God, I’m so sorry. I must have fallen asleep,” she apologized, skittering away from Niall. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart. We should get you home. Louis and Harry will be worrying.” 

Gracie glanced at the clock on Niall’s desk. It was past midnight and well past her eleven o’clock curfew. She grabbed her phone and her winter things and gave Niall a kiss on the side of the head as she left. In the car, she found three missed calls and twelve missed text messages from Louis, each one increasingly frantic. _Gracie, text me_ , the last one demanded. 

Gracie texted Louis as Maura drove through the darkened streets, the car’s heat struggling to kick in. _Just leaving Niall’s. I must have fallen asleep. Maura’s driving me home. I’m so sorry_. 

The reply came straight away. _Oh thank God, you’re okay. I was worried._

Gracie stared at the message, at the blinking reply cursor, for a long time trying to make sense of it. Louis wasn’t angry at her for blowing curfew. He wasn’t going to ground her for the forseeable future. He’d been _worried_ about her. For some reason, it had never occurred to her that they worried about her. Not just because she was a kid with two dead parents, but because they _loved_ her, because they cared what happened to her. 

“Everything okay?” Maura asked, glancing over. Gracie nodded, burying her phone in her coat pocket, unable to think of a response. 

*** 

It had been two weeks since baby Anne died and Harry still hadn’t gotten out of bed. They didn’t have a proper funeral - it would have been too much, too heart-rending for everyone. In the end, it was just Louis and Gracie, in a sun-spangled cemetery with leaves crunching underfoot, each of them pitching a handful of earth onto her tiny coffin before it was lowered into the ground forever. 

Afterwards, the two of them took a boat ride along the Sienne, cold wind whipping their hair and numbing their skin and whisking away their tears as soon as they fell. The rode the boat back and forth until the sky grew dark and the night grew chilly and then they walked home together, never once letting go of each other’s hands. 

She’d always thought of Louis and Harry as adults, as omnipotent and all knowing, but that day, she and Louis just felt like two little kids who’d gotten separated from their parents in the supermarket. 

The next morning, Liam and Zayn came over early and helped them pack up the nursery and cart everything off to a charity shop. 

Louis ordered Thai food for lunch and they ate it straight out of the containers on the tall seats in the kitchen, knees bumping, the windows fogged up with their collective breath. 

Harry still didn’t get up. 

That night, after Liam and Zayn had gone home, Louis constructed a blanket fort in the living room. They stayed up all night inside it, drinking hot chocolate and reading and listening to the whisper of the rain on the roof, hidden away from the outside world. When Louis finally spoke, his voice was rough and scratchy, as if he’d been screaming for days. 

“My mum was diagnosed with cancer when I was around Jack’s age,” he said, thumbing idly at the polished buttons on Jack’s romper where the boy was sleeping in a nest of blankets between them.   
  


Gracie raised a curious eyebrow and Louis quickly corrected her assumption. “My _birth_ mum. I don’t – I don’t remember much about her. I have a few pictures, but…every year it seems I lose a little more. What I do remember was awful. In and out of hospitals, adults whispering behind closed doors, watching her fade bit by bit. I was five when she finally passed.” 

Gracie put her hand on top of his and he gave her a small smile. “I was so angry when dad first brought Anne home. I threw a full on strop. It felt like he was trying to erase mum. And me too – by extension. What we’d all had together. It wasn’t until the day Anne brought Harry over that I started to come round to the idea. He was so tiny – all eyes really – with this wispy blonde hair sticking up in every direction. And the second he came into our house, he burst into tears and ran off and hide under the dining room table.” 

Gracie giggled a bit at the resulting image and Louis gave her a wistful smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes. “I crawled under the table and he was all curled up and shaking and red and snotty – and I just – I thought maybe he was the one person who needed my dad as much as I did. And he – he was so small and defenseless – all I wanted to do was take care of him.”   
  


_You never stopped taking care of him_ , Gracie wrote. Louis nodded. “Never. But I think – I mean – back then, me and dad never really talked about mum. Especially once we all moved in together and he and Anne got married. And I think maybe I _needed_ to. Sometimes, I’d tell Harry about her and he’d listen, but he’d never really known her. I needed _dad_ to talk about her. I needed to keep her alive. Even if it was just here,” he tapped his head. “And here,” Louis gestured to his heart. 

Gracie nodded slowly. “And I think maybe Harry and I did that to you. I think – we never talked about mum and dad after the accident because it was too hard or we didn’t know how to broach it. But we should have tried harder.” 

_It’s OK_ , Gracie wrote, but Louis immediately shook his head, tears spilling from his eyes. “It’s _not_. I don’t want you to forget them like I forgot my mum. I don’t want you to think we didn’t love them because we did – so, so much. I don’t want you to have to hide that part of your life, of yourself. Because it’s part of our life too.” 

Gracie nodded, tears falling from her own eyes. She wanted to say something, _anything_ to ease his conscience, but instead she just leaned over and hugged him, hoping it was enough to convey everything she felt. 

They sat there for a long time in silence, breathing each other in. As morning crept in, they stayed up to watch the sunset ignite the edges of their blanket fort and then took a still-sleeping Jack in his pram to get sandwiches from the boulangerie on the corner. 

When they came back, Harry still hadn’t emerged from the master bedroom, even after Louis tried to coax him out with tea. 

*** 

Harry missed several photo assignments in a row and Louis made hushed calls out on the balcony to his employers and made excuses to friends that stopped by with casseroles and flowers. Jack didn’t seem to understand much, except that Harry was sad. 

After Anne’s death, Louis was a whirlwind, taking care of Jack and freelancing articles and hosting friends for tea and getting Gracie off to school each day. The only time he seemed to slow down was when he trudged, exhausted, into their darkened bedroom at night, where Harry was curled on his side under a heap of blankets, nesting like a hibernating animal. 

Louis would force him up into a sitting position, supporting Harry’s weight with his own body and patiently spoon him soup or coax him to drink a sip of smoothie, feeding him like a baby. 

Harry feebly protested at times, but mostly he surrendered, letting Louis feed him and once every few days, bathe him. Gracie had accidentally walked in on them once, Louis scrubbing Harry’s back with a loofah and Harry’s knees pulled up to his chest, eyes staring straight ahead and completely devoid of anything. 

It wasn’t just that he was naked and vulnerable – he was her brother after all and she’d seen in various state of undress – it was that walking in on them felt like she was witnessing something terribly intimate. Something she was never meant to see. Harry looked more than broken – he looked _empty_ – like a cracked teacup all the liquid had spilled out of. 

Harry and Louis had always been like two solid branches of the same tree – supporting her and Jack in their little nest – but with Louis holding all the weight things felt more and more off-balance. Louis never complained, but he looked constantly exhausted, like he was always mere seconds away from collapsing. 

Harry had stopped crying after the first few days, but now Gracie almost _wished_ he would cry. At least then she would know what he was feeling, that he was feeling anything at all. It was like Harry was in black and white while the rest of them were in color. Everything that had made him sparkle and shine – that had made people turn their heads to stare that day on the merry go round – had completely slipped away, leaving behind a pale shell of a man. 

Gracie and Louis returned to their bachelor days - takeout and television on the couch every night – with one or another of their mates stopping by. Out of deference to Harry, they tried to keep their voices down, to keep the chatter and the din of the television to a minimum, but Harry didn’t seem to notice either way, rising from bed only to use the loo or shuffle off to the kitchen for a glass of water. He drifted through rooms like a specter – thin and pale and insubstantial – leaving behind a prickling sense of unease. 

Conversation fell silent when he came into a room and no one seemed to know how to act around him anymore, not even Louis, who always knew what to say or do. It didn’t seem to matter anyway – as Harry never seemed to notice whether they were there or not. 

Some days, Gracie wondered if Harry hadn’t died that day too, if the thing that had returned from the hospital wasn’t him, but a ghost. 

And it’s not that Louis and Gracie forgot Anne, it’s not that it stopped hurting – like their parents’ death, it was an always ache that never quite went away – but they carried on. Because there was no other choice. Because the plants on the windowsill needed watering and Jack needed feeding and Gracie needed a new pair of trainers and the leak in the roof needed fixing. Because there were exams to be taken and papers to be written and firsts to be had under the warm cocoon of blankets in Niall’s bedroom. 

And the more they carried on with life, the further Harry drifted away from them. 

*** 

Surprisingly, it was Gracie that broke first. Niall was taking her to her first formal and she and Louis had spent ages shopping for the perfect dress, but on the night of the formal, Harry wouldn’t get out of bed to take their picture and see them off. 

“Gracie – I can’t – you know I can’t,” Harry said softly, sadly, gazing through her like she wasn’t really there. In the low light, his skin was unnaturally pale, dark purple smudged under his eyes. He’d lost so much weight his collarbones and wrist bones pushed out from his skin in a way that looked painful and fragile and _wrong_. 

Gracie crossed her arms over her chest, hating him with every cell of her body, hating him in a way she’d never hated anyone. And it was like a dam broke inside her, spilling all the pent up words of months of not talking to him. “You’re not the only one who lost her, you know.” 

Harry’s eyes widened and he sat up on his elbows, slowly, wincing as if even that small movement taxed him. “Gracie?” 

“You’re selfish. You’re so fucking selfish! Louis has been holding this whole family together – taking care of me and Jack and taking care of you – and all you do is lay there. You just lay there. Don’t you think we’re hurting too? Don’t you think we miss her too? But laying there isn’t going to bring her back,” she shouted, not caring how loud she was, not caring how much he flinched back into the pillows. 

Drawn by the commotion, Louis and Niall stumbled in from the hall. “What’s going on?” Louis asked, gazing back and forth between Harry and Gracie. 

Gracie ignored him, continuing to dig into Harry. “If you need help, you’ve got to see Katherine or someone, _anyone_. You’ve got to talk about it or take some medication. You’ve got to take care of yourself. But you can’t treat us like this. You just – you _can’t_ – because, because we love you, chick. We love you and we need you. Louis needs you. Jack needs you. I –” Gracie’s voice broke off in a choked off sob. “I’ve already lost everyone else. I can’t lose you too. I need you. I need you to get better. I need you to start getting better now,” she cried. 

Then Niall’s arms were around her, tugging her away. “Gracie, leave ‘im be.” 

“No. He has to know. He has to know he’s hurting us. He has to know he’s not alone. Because we’re a family.” 

“I know. I know love,” Niall said softly, rubbing circles in her back. Louis just stared at Gracie in shock, surprised at her outburst or else her words. She’d never called them family before, even if that’s what they were. She’d always considered her mum and dad her family, but as of late, she’d revised her definition. Family was anyone who took care of you, who loved you, even when they didn’t need to, even when you made it hard to. She understood that now. 

Harry sat up slowly, leaning back against the headboard. He scrubbed his hands over his face, smearing tears and snot back into his unwashed hair. “Okay.” 

“Okay?” Gracie asked in a small voice. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I just – I wanted her so much - ” Harry choked. It was the most he’d said on the subject since the night he’d come home from the hospital. 

“I know. But she’s gone. And we’re right here.” Gracie slipped out of Niall’s arms and crawled under the covers, snuggling up close to Harry, past worrying about wrinkling her dress or mussing up her hair. “We’re here. We’re here. We’re here,” she whispered fiercely into the tear-damp join of his neck, fingers tightening around him hard enough to bruise. “We’re here and we need you to be here too. Because that’s how family’s work. And you’re mine now.” 

Louis slid in on Harry’s other side, carding his hands through Harry’s snarled curls. Niall quietly excused himself out to the hall. “We love you, chick,” Louis said, kissing Harry’s temple. “But I don’t know how to get through to you anymore. And that scares me. It scares me so much. Because I’ve always known.” 

“I’m sorry,” Harry gasped, voice muffled between the press of their bodies. He was shaking hard, but it seemed like a good thing, a rattling release of pressure. “I’m sorry. I just – I couldn’t breathe. It was like there was no air. We built a space for her and then she was gone and it was just a space and I didn’t – I didn’t know how to fill it.” 

“With us, babe. You fill it with us. We wanted her too, but we need to be enough for you. Me and Gracie and Jack need to be enough,” Louis whispered, blue eyes glassy. 

“You are—” Harry protested. “You’re more than enough. You’re more than I probably deserve – I just. I got lost. And I need help. I need help getting out.” 

“Okay,” Louis nodded. “We can get you help. First thing tomorrow we’ll call Catherine. If I get dinner, will you try to eat something for me and take a nice hot shower love?” Louis coaxed, rubbing Harry’s shoulders. 

“Okay,” Harry nodded, tears spilling down his face. It didn’t seem sad so much as a reflex at this point. Gracie and Louis were both leaking too. 

“Can I stay with you? I don’t want to go to the dance anymore,” Gracie said, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. It was pale blue satin with crystal embellishments, paired with a white fur shrug. She’d felt like a princess when she’d tried it on in the shop and Louis had gotten a bit teary when she’d twirled in front of the mirror to make the skirt float. At the time it had seemed important, a life passage, but it didn’t seem as important now. Not with Harry all fallen to bits. 

“Gracie, you should go-” Louis protested. “It’s your first dance.” 

She shrugged. “There will be other dances. I want to be with you guys,” she said, squeezing Harry’s hand. “I want to be where I belong.” 

Louis nodded. “All right. Chick, I’m gonna help you into the shower. Gracie, can you call for dinner? Whatever you want. See if Niall wants to stay.” 

Gracie nodded, drawing them both into a shaky, sniffly hug before running off to find Niall. 

He was standing in the hall, looking so handsome and out of place in his suit and tie, worrying at his cufflinks. “Niall, is it okay – ” 

He nodded before she could even finish her sentence. “We don’t have to go. I understand.” 

“Rain check?” she asked brightly. 

“Yeah. Of course.” Niall made to grab his overcoat, but she caught his wrist. 

“ _Stay_? I mean – only if you want? We’re just gonna eat and watch a movie. I’m sure Louis has some sweats you could borrow.” 

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to intrude on family time. Now that you’re all finally speaking to each other,” he smirked. 

Gracie nodded vigorously. “I want you here. You’re – you’re a part of my life too. And I want to share it with you – even the messy bits. But only if you want…?” 

Niall grinned, pecking her chin. “I love the messy bits.” 

*** 

Harry emerged from the bedroom a half hour later, curls damp and face scrubbed clean and wearing one of Louis’ old footie jerseys, Tomlinson 17 stretched out over his shoulder-blades. Louis wouldn’t let go of Harry all night – even when he was eating – he had a hand resting on Harry’s knee or arm. Like he was trying to make sure he was still there. Harry soaked up the attention, only protesting a little when Louis dragged him into his lap during the movie and refused to let him budge, nuzzling kisses into his neck. 

Gracie hide her face into Niall’s shirt, cheeks heating. “God, they’re so embarrassing.” 

“Yeah,” Niall grinned. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” 

It _was_. 

*** 

Harry slowly got better. He still had some days where he barely got out of bed, but there were fewer and fewer of them. He started seeing Catherine twice a week and she prescribed him some anti-depression medication, which seemed to help. He started jogging in the mornings and making green smoothies for breakfast and he and Gracie sometimes did yoga together in the afternoons. 

And it wasn’t just Harry that was getting better. It was like a spell had been broken. Gracie was talking again – at home and in school. She’d even started studying French with Niall in an effort to fit in – well, _some_ studying with a lot of snogging thrown in. It felt so good to speak in any language, it was sometimes hard to stop once she started going. 

After everything that happened, Harry and Louis seemed more open to talking about their parents. They spent a lot of time going through old family photos and revisiting memories Gracie had thought were lost forever – and even some she’d never known about – from the time before she was born. 

Talking about them eased some of the burden on Gracie – the weight of the guilt and sense of betrayal she had carried alone since coming to Paris – lessening more and more as the days passed. She understood now that loving her brothers, loving _Paris_ , didn’t mean she loved her parents any less. Didn’t mean she had given up on them. If anything, it was what they would have wanted. For her to be happy. And she _was_. She really, really was. 

It wasn’t an every second thing of course – she didn’t spring out of bed every morning with a smile on her face and a hop in her step – but there were more and more moments when she looked at the faces around her, looked at the life she had built here and thought, this is it. This is home. This is where I belong. 

By the time December rolled around, Harry seemed his old self. He’d spent most of late November taking extra photo assignments to make up for the time he’d missed and as a consequence, had a little extra money to take Louis away on holiday for his birthday. 

Gracie had clung to them a little more tightly than she cared to admit when they parted at the airport. 

  
“You’ll come back won’t you?” she asked Harry quietly, gnawing at her lip. It was the first time they’d all been away from each other since their parents’ accident and she was afraid – you just never knew when the last time you saw someone would be. 

“Always,” Harry whispered fiercely, knocking their foreheads together. 

“Come on, chick,” Louis grinned, slinging an arm around Harry’s waist. “We’re gonna miss our flight. And I’m ready to be pampered.” Louis bent down to give Jack a final last kiss. 

Jack patted Louis’ stubbly face, burbling happily and showing two gummy teeth. “Dah-dah.” 

“Did he?” Louis spun to face Harry. 

“Dah dah,” Jack repeated, clapping his chubby hands. 

Harry frowned, forehead wrinkling. “Well, which one do you suppose he means?” 

Louis snorted. “Come on, you got to be Gracie’s first word. It’s only fair I get to be Jack’s.” 

“Is not—” Harry protested, sounding more like a little brother than a lover. 

“Go on then,” Molly pushed them gently. “I’ve got them. He’ll still be talking when you get back. You can sort it out then.” 

Gracie and Jack stayed at the Horans while Louis and Harry were away. It was a whirlwind of baking cookies and playing board games and building snowmen and having snow-fights in the back garden. Evenings were spent cozied up in front of the fire, Molly teaching Gracie how to knit and Niall plucking nimbly away at his guitar. In a week, Jack’s vocabulary had expanded to include “cat” and “ball” as well as “da-da” and Gracie made sure to get video on her phone for Harry and Louis. 

They returned from holiday tanned and relaxed and more in sync than ever. The brothers had never looked physically alike (not actually being blood-related), but their expressions and mannerisms were eerily similar at times, having grown up together and loving each other the way they did. It didn’t even embarrass Gracie the way it used to – the way they constantly sought each other out, or when they’d race laughing and elbowing each other like two kids to their bedroom at night after putting Jack to sleep. It was kind of… _nice_. 

Harry and Louis had returned to their date nights too – dressing up once a week to go out on the town and leaving Gracie and Niall to watch Jack. Gracie and Niall still hadn’t…done _that_ , but Gracie finally realized she had all the time in the world to grow up. And she had all the time in the world to become the person she wanted to be. 

For now, she just wanted to _be_. 

*** 

On a cold, clear day in February, Maura and Molly stopped by for evening tea. Gracie and Niall were playing blocks with Jack on the carpet, just home from school, and Harry had been cooking all day. Louis fixed them drinks and they all sat on the couch, voices merging harmoniously with the roar of the fire. 

When Harry joined them from the kitchen, Louis wordlessly filled him a glass of red wine, their fingers brushing briefly over the stem of the glass. Harry’s cheeks dimpled in a secret smile as he sat down next to Louis, close enough for their legs to touch. 

“How’s the patisserie doing, Molly?” Harry asked, hand not holding his wine giving Louis thigh a covert squeeze. 

“Business is always good in the winter when people want something in their belly,” Molly grinned, tucking a flame-red strand of hair behind her ear. “I brought some of our new tarts for you to try for dessert.” And then, sticking her tongue out at her wife: “Maura hates them.” 

Maura smacked Molly’s arm. “I didn’t say I _hated_ them. Just haven’t got a taste for strawberries. I’m sure – if you’re into that kind of thing, they’re quite lovely.” 

Molly snorted, rolling her eyes. 

“Well, we love strawberries. Might even go so far to say we’re a house of strawberry fiends,” Louis interjected. 

They all laughed, but the smile quickly faded from Maura’s face. “All right love?” Louis asked. 

She shrugged, running a hand back through her short blonde hair. “Yeah. Just…dealing with a difficult case at work.” Molly put a comforting hand on Maura’s arm. 

“It’s always hard with the real young’uns, the babies. What some of ‘em have been through—” she shuddered, shaking her head. 

Harry tensed slightly, but Louis wordlessly reached over and massaged his neck until he relaxed. “It’s important work you do. But I’m sure it’s hard not to get involved sometimes.” 

“Molly and I are tied up in another investment, but if we had the money…” Maura trailed off, taking a big swallow of her bourbon. 

“Is there…is there something we can do to help?” Harry asked, in a small voice. 

“There’s a little girl, Amara. Eight months old. A little Pakistani girl, big beautiful eyes like you wouldn’t believe. She was born deaf and her parents abandoned her as a baby. There’s a surgery they could do that would restore her to full hearing, but the home she’s at doesn’t have the money to spare.” 

Harry exchanged a quick indecipherable glance with Louis. “Have you tried crowd-funding?” Louis asked. “I could set something up if you sent me some pictures and info. And Harry has a pretty big social network. He could help get the word out.” 

“No – I didn’t even think of that - I’m pretty shite with computers…” Niall snorted his agreement from his place on the carpet and Molly affectionately thumped him on the back of the head. “But yeah, if you could do that? _Would_ you do that?” Maura asked, twisting her hands in her lap. 

“Yeah, of course. Could get something up as early tomorrow. Maybe Zayn could help with some cool graphics,” Louis suggested, all the while rubbing Harry’s back. 

“Okay.” Maura visibly seemed to relax. “Yeah. Let’s try it.” 

*** 

Zayn helped Louis set up the crowd-funding site the next day, but the grainy pictures Maura had sent didn’t do the little girl any justice and they didn’t pull in many donations in the first week. The following weekend Harry went with Maura to the group home and took a few pictures of Amara for the site. He was quiet for a long time after he returned, spending a good minute staring out the window in the kitchen, while the kettle whistled away behind him. 

“All right?” Gracie asked, flicking off the burner and pouring them both tea. 

Harry smiled, nodding. “Yeah. All right.” 

He and Gracie were at the breakfast table reviewing the photos on his laptop when Louis came up behind them, Jack balanced on one hip. “Wow Chick, those are amazing.” 

Harry grinned. “You think so?” 

“Yeah,” Louis shifted his weight, bouncing Jack who giggled and smacked at Louis’ collarbone with a chubby hand. “Email me the ones you pick for the site.” 

Harry nodded, adding wistfully as he chewed at his cuticle, “she’s beautiful, isn’t she? Louis, if you could have seen her—” 

“Harry—” Louis paused, biting his lip. “You know, no one would blame you if you didn’t want to get involved—” 

“What?” 

“I mean – so soon after Anne. It’s a lot for anyone –” 

Harry stiffened, turning away from Louis to click through the photos. “I’m fine.” 

“Okay,” Louis nodded, dropping the subject. “Can you take Jack while I shower?” 

“Dah-dah-dah-dah,” Jack screamed shrilly as Louis handed him over. 

*** 

By the beginning of March, they were two days away and still £8,000 short of their final fundraising goal. They’d were midway through dinner when Harry looked up from his pasta and cleared his throat. 

“I want to adopt Amara.” 

“Harry-” Louis started cautiously, setting down his fork. 

“No-” Harry cut him off. “I’ve thought it through and I’ve thought of all the reasons we shouldn’t – losing Anne and money and all those things – but none of those reasons are good enough. If you could just meet her, you’d see –” 

“ _Meet_ her? Harry, have you been to since her since you took the pictures?” 

Harry blushed, dropping his head. “I thought we agreed we weren’t getting involved aside from raising the money for her surgery.” 

“Louis, please, I – I need to do this. You haven’t seen the home. We can give her a better life here—” 

Louis’ chair scraped back from the table. “And what if it doesn’t work out, chick? Have you thought of _that_? What if they go digging through our past and find out we’re brothers? What if the adoption doesn’t go through? What if –” Louis’ voice broke off, the question hanging in between them like a storm cloud, like the threat of impending rain. 

“I’m stronger now. I promise,” Harry insisted. 

Louis sank back down into his chair, body deflating as he buried his face in his hands. “But I don’t know if _I_ am. I don’t know if I could lose another daughter so soon. If it doesn’t work out—” 

Harry got up and moved around the table, hugging Louis from behind. “I love you so much and I won’t fall apart again and I won’t let you fall apart, okay? Can you just come see her with me?” 

Louis sighed. “Fine. I’ll see her, but that’s all I’m promising.” 

Harry squealed, giving Louis a big kiss. “You won’t regret it.” 

“Oh my God,” Gracie yelped, holding out her mobile for them to see. “We just reached goal!” 

*** 

Louis and Harry started the adoption paperwork just before Amara was due to go in for her surgery. They were granted special permission to stay with her after the surgery, given that she was so young and it was such a potentially traumatic experience. Gracie and Niall were there with them in the doctor’s office when her cochlear implant was first turned on and the first crackling sounds of the world drifted in. 

“Hello baby,” Louis cooed, bouncing her on his knee. “Hello beautiful girl.” Amara’s eyes widened and she looked back and forth between Louis and Harry, startled by the sound of voices speaking to her. Louis’ voice was the first she’d ever heard. 

“You getting this papa?” the doctor asked Harry, who was filming the exchange on his phone. 

Harry nodded. “Say hello,” Louis prodded, nudging Harry with his knee, but Harry just stared at the two of them, tears running down his face, too emotional to form any words. 

“That’s Harry,” Louis explained. “And he loves you so, so much. And if they let us, we’re gonna be your daddies.” Amara squealed happily, as if she understood, patting Louis’ face. 

“And that’s your Auntie Gracie,” Louis explained. “And Niall. He’s Irish. And that’s your big brother, Jack.” 

“Cat?” Jack blurted. “Cat! Cat!” 

Amara startled at the volume of Jack’s voice and Louis laughed. “No, she’s not a cat. This is your sister, Amara.” 

“Can I –?” Harry finally croaked, reaching for Amara. Louis carefully passed her and she and Harry just stared at each other for a long time before he was composed enough to speak. 

“We had a little girl once,” Harry said softly. “Her name was Anne. But she wasn’t ready for us yet. And that’s okay. Because it means we have you. And I’m not giving you up for anything. Because you were meant for us and we were meant for you.” 

Amara grinned and poked her finger into Harry’s dimple. Harry’s lip wobbled as another tear streaked down his face. “All right?” Louis asked, moving to stand behind Harry and stroke his hair. “Yeah. I’m just happy,” Harry said wetly. 

“Gracie, you want to hold her?” 

Gracie thought back to the day at the café, Harry’s hand resting on the swell of Eleanor’s stomach. _Gracie, you want to feel?_

She’d said no, but she’d give anything to have that moment back. “Yeah. Yes please.” 

Gracie took Amara from Harry, settling the little girl in her lap. She was beautiful, with a head of dark curls and a tiny-bowed shaped mouth and big eyes with the longest lashes Gracie had ever seen outside of Zayn’s. There was something poetic about it – the girl who had never heard and the girl who had never spoke. “Hello Amara. You’re a very lucky girl. You’re going to have the two best dads ever. And I can’t wait to be your Aunt.” 

Amara grinned a gummy smile at Gracie and the moment was only broken by Jack screeching “Catttt!” and everyone dissolving into laughter. 

**Three Years later**

“Well. Have you decided yet?” Louis asked, as he settled a basket of croissants on the table between a carafe of orange juice and a pot of coffee and took his seat beside Harry. 

“I uh – was kinda thinking about – Trinity College? They have a really good writing program and it’s not too terribly far—” Gracie said practically as she twisted her hair into a knot, fanning her neck. It was an unusually warm day for March. 

“Nothing to do with a certain Irish bloke then?” Louis teased as he reached around Liam for the jam. 

“Yeah, well…that too,” she blushed. Niall had left for uni a full year ahead of Gracie and it had been a year of falling asleep during all night Skype conversations and taking the train and ferry back and forth to see each other during long holiday weekends and missing him so much it hurt. 

Gracie was enjoying her last year of college – besides Lux, she had a handful of other good mates and they spent nearly every minute together outside of school, trying to soak up their last moments with each other before they all went off to different unis. But it wasn’t the same as what Gracie had with Niall. 

“That’s great, Gracie,” Harry grinned as he buttered little shreds of croissant for Amara. 

“Another babysitter gone,” Louis sighed in an exaggerated fashion. 

“What’s that?” Zayn asked, ambling into the kitchen looking exhausted. 

“We were just talking about Gracie’s plans for Uni,” Liam explained, leaning his head back to kiss Zayn on the chin. “All right, love?” 

“Just got them down,” Zayn said, collapsing into the vacant chair next to Liam’s. He gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Harry poured him, taking a giant slug before setting it down again. “I don’t know how you two manage,” he groaned, resting his head on his hands. “Being a parent’s exhausting.” 

“Should have thought of that before you had twins,” Louis smirked. 

“Gonna blame that one on Liam’s super sperm.” 

“Ew. Some of us trying to eat,” Gracie said, while Louis mimed gagging. 

“Zayn, you can kip in ours if you need to lie down for a bit. Might be your only chance, yeah?” Harry offered. 

“Really? Yeah. That’d be amazing. Thanks Harry.” Zayn stood up, turning at the last second. “Almost forgot. What’d you decide Gracie?” 

“Trinity.” 

“Ah. Good on ya. Keep our boy Niall in line,” he chuckled before disappearing around the corner. 

“Think I’ll join him,” Liam yawned, standing up to stretch. 

“No sex in our bed,” Louis called after him. 

“As if I’d have the energy for it,” Liam groaned, rubbing his eyes. 

“Remember when we had fun friends, Harry? Who drank and partied and didn’t come over to take naps?” Louis reminisced fondly. Liam and Zayn’s twin girls were only four months old – but it had been a trying four months for them – in the first month Liam constantly called Harry and Louis at odd hours for advice. 

After the: _Is the poo meant to be this color?_ text, graphic picture included, Louis had threatened to poo on Liam if he didn’t “ _use fucking google to solve his problems like everyone else_ ” and the calls had dissipated somewhat. 

“Oh hush,” Harry scolded, slapping Louis’ arm. “You remember what it was like when Jack and Amara were that age.” 

“Yeah, now they’re so grown-up and sophisticated,” Louis said, just as Jack released a loud burp, sending him and Amara into a fit of giggles. 

“Reckon you’ll have more?” Gracie asked, raising an eyebrow. “Empty nest syndrome and all?” 

“Two’s fine,” Harry insisted. 

“Oh come now, we’ll have all that free space once Gracie’s gone. How many babies do you think we could fit into her room, Chick?” 

“Gonna fit one Louis and a futon into that room if you’re not careful,” Harry grumbled warningly. 

Gracie laughed. “I’m gonna miss you guys.” 

“We’re gonna miss you too,” Harry said, squeezing her hand. 

“Don’t listen to him,” Louis interjected. “He’s already itching to turn your room back into a darkroom.” 

“Heeeyyyyyy,” Harry protested. 

“Just takin’ the piss. We always have a room for you love. And besides, we’ll have the whole summer together.” 

“About that – ” Harry interrupted. “I have a bunch of photo assignments already lined up for the summer. Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Galapagos. Now that Nat Geo has me on contract, I’m gonna be pretty busy.” 

Gracie frowned. “But it’s our last summer together, Chick —” 

“I know,” Harry grinned, eyes twinkling. “Which is why I thought maybe you’d all want to come with me? Thought we might get our suitcases out one more time, Lou. Do a little traveling as a family.” 

“Seriously?” Gracie squealed. 

“Yeah, now that I’m pulling in extra money, it’s definitely in the budget. You and Louis and the kids can do touristy stuff during the day and we can all hang out at night and on my days off. And Lou, you can do some freelance travel writing and Gracie, there’s some great journaling to be done –” 

“It’s has been ages,” Louis said wistfully, sipping his tea. “Suppose I’m too old for it?” 

“Never too old to see somewhere new,” Harry grinned. 

“No. I suppose you’re right. What do you say, Gracie Lou?” 

“I’m in,” she grinned. 

*** 

After the dishes had been cleared away, Gracie slipped away to her room to call Lux. They had plans to meet for lunch so Gracie could meet Lux’s new girlfriend and catch a movie together after. 

Gracie stood for a second in the doorway – looking at the pictures she’d tacked up on the wall – pictures of Paris and Niall and Lux and her family, pictures from the last three years and felt something swell in her chest. She remembered her first few nights in this room, sleeping among her unpacked boxes and the lingering smell of darkroom chemicals and wishing she were anywhere but here. She remembered the silence being big enough to swallow her. 

So much had changed since then. 

The place she had never really meant to be a home had slowly, but surely become one. And the people she had never meant to fall in love with she now couldn’t imagine living without. 

Gracie still missed her parents and her childhood home in London, but she no longer felt the overwhelming urge to go back. 

The future was bright and all she had to do was keep moving one foot in front of the other. 


End file.
